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A LETTER 






PETER COOPER, 



"THE TREATMENT TO BE EXTENDED TO THE REBELS 
INDIVIDUALLY," 



"THE MODE OF RESTORING THE REBEL STATES TO THE UNION." 



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CONTAINING A REPRINT OF A REVIEW OF JUDGE CURTIS' PAPER ON THE EMANCIPATION 

PROCLAMATION. 



WITH A LETTER FROM PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 



CHARLES P. KLRKLAND. 



S01K. 



NEW YORK: 
ANSON D. F. RANDOLPH, 

No. 7 7 BROADWAY. 
1 865. 



tSs2rf 



Edward O. Jenkins, Printer, 2U North William Mieet, New York. 






A L E T T E E 



PETER COOPER, 



"THE TREATMENT TO BE EXTENDED TO THE REBELS 
INDIVIDUALLY," 



"THE MODE OF KESTOKING THE EEBEL STATES TO THE UNION." 



itjr nit ^pnbfe 



CONTAINING A REPKINT OF A REVIEW OF JUDGE CURTIS* PAPER ON THE EMANCIPATION 

PROCLAMATION, 



WITH A LETTER FROM PRESIDENT LINCOLN 

c 

CHARLES P. KIRKLAND. 




NEW YORK: 
ANSON D. F. RANDOLPH, 

No. 770 BROADWAY. 
1865. 



t4C8 



New York, June 14, 1865. 
MB. PETER COOPER: 

In compliance with your request, I have written out, briefly, my 
views on two subjects of vital importance and absorbing interest, namely, 
h The Proper Treatment of the Rebels individually," and " The Mode of 
Restoration of the Rebel States to the Union." Believing these views to 
be correct, I publish them in the humble hope that they may receive the 
approbation of my fellow-citizens. 

Your friend, 

Charles P. Kirkland. 



LETTER. 



Reverent thanks to God ! the battle is fought and the victory 
won ! After a contest of four years of unexampled proportions, 
in which hundreds of millions of treasure have been expended, 
and hundreds of thousands of lives have been sacrificed, the 
glorious end has come ; reason, right, justice, liberty, humanity, 
have triumphed ; the great truth is demonstrated that " man is 
capable of self-government ;" the hearts of all lovers of free insti- 
tutions, here and everywhere, are filled with rejoicing ; the 
philanthropist witnesses with emotions of unspeakable delight 
the utter extinction of Slavery in this land, and, by necessary con- 
sequence, very speedily in every other ; and in this death of 
slavery the American statesman sees the removal for ever of the 
great disturbing cause of his country's peace, the source of all the 
discord, heart-burnings and dangers of the Republic for the last 
half century. This gave life to the Rebellion, and retributively by 
the Rebellion it died ! 

The contest has in its progress and in its results exhibited, on the 
part of the defenders of the country, all the highest qualities of 
man : heroic courage, patient endurance, unshrinking resolution, 
persistent patriotism, unexampled military skill, noble generosity ; 
while at the same time it has shown an extent of material power 
and resource, of which we ourselves had no adequate conception, 
and of which other nations were wholly ignorant. It is no vain 
boast to say that " the United States of America" now have an 
elevated, influential and distinguished place among the nations. 
The name of " American citizen " will now be an honored and re- 
spected name- wherever it is known or heard. These great results 
have been obtained through enormous expenditures of money and 
of life ; but who will say that the end is not worth the means ? 
that the great cause of civilization, of free institutions, of civil 
and religious liberty, indeed, of Humanity, has not received a 
benefit equivalent to the costly price which has been paid ? How 

(5) 



joyous and blessed is this hour to those who, from the very incep- 
tion of the Rebellion in December, 1860, by the adoption of the 
ordinance of secession in South Carolina, have with unwavering 
and cheerful confidence looked forward to the end now attained, 
and who with unclouded vision saw in a near future the salvation 
of their country ! Rich now is the reward of their faith ! Hum- 
bly and devoutly do the American people thank the Great Lord 
of all, that in His wisdom and goodness He has seen fit to grant 
such a termination to such a struggle, and thus to place the 
blessed institution of their fathers on a lasting foundation and to 
give us an assured faith that they can and will be transmitted in 
all their strength and beneficence to future generations. He gave 
to the men of the Revolution the wisdom to create this beautiful 
temple ; to us of this day He has vouchsafed the successful per- 
formance of the task of defending and preserving it. Oh that 
the American people may manifest their earnest gratitude to Him 
for this great deliverance ! not only by their words but by their 
works ; by the more extended cultivation and practice of His 
precepts, the less engrossing devotion to matters of material and 
personal interest, and by a higher and purer love of country ; 
such a love as will embrace the North, South, East and West in 
the bonds of a common and an affectionate brotherhood, will allay 
all sectional jealousies, and will carry out to its beautiful results 
the divine injunction, " On earth peace, good will toward men." 

This mighty struggle having thus been brought to a practical 
close by the overthrow of the military power of the Rebellion, 
two questions of exceeding magnitude present themselves for im- 
mediate decision : First, " The treatment to be extended to indi- 
vidual rebels ;" and, second, " The manner of restoration of the 
rebel States to the Union." 

These questions I propose to consider. 



I. 

THE TREATMENT TO BE EXTENDED TO THE REBELS 
INDIVIDUALLY. 

In the discussion of this subject passion and prejudice should 
be wholly discarded, for it concerns alike the highest earthly in- 
terests of many individuals and the present and future welfare of 
our country, and no one who justly appreciates its importance 



can speak or write upon it without a deep sense of responsibility. 
On its just decision will, in no small degree, depend the future 
" weal or woe " of the Republic. 

To arrive at just conclusions, it is indispensable to consider the 
originating causes of the Rebellion ; the moral and legal offence 
involved in it ; the spirit in which it has been conducted by its 
authors, and by which it has been plainly . marked in its entire 
progress ; and after a dispassionate investigation of these mat- 
ters, to consider what measures, as to the individual actors in 
this frightful drama, are required by justice, humanity and a due 
regard to the future peace and security of our country. 

1. It cannot be doubted that the actual inauguration of the 
Rebellion is attributable to the unhallowed ambition of political 
leaders, born and nurtured under a system wholly antagonistic to 
our form of government, and whose keen perceptions exhibited to 
them, in colors of living light, the inevitable and not very remote 
melting away of the preponderating political power and influence 
so long exercised by their section and by themselves as its 
leaders ; this melting away being the necessary result of the dif- 
ference in the practical working of the two systems of labor in 
the two great territorial divisions of the country. Had no such 
ambition existed in the breasts of prominent Southern men, the 
attempt to overthrow this Government never would have been 
made. Had these men been imbued with the spirit of the heroic 
and pure-minded Pettigru , the people of that region would at this 
moment have been in the full fruition of the same peace, happiness 
and security which, as citizens of " the United States of America," 
they enjoyed on the 21st day of December,* 1860, and which as 
such they had not for a solitary hour ceased to enjoy from the mo- 
ment of the adoption of the Constitution in 1789 up to that (to 
them) fatally disastrous day. These leading conspirators had all 
ready a field wonderfully adapted to the consummation of their 
purpose of plunging their States into immediate rebellion. This 
field they had been for a long series of years assiduous in pre- 
paring for the harvest they were now about to reap. The people 
of those States were in general, at the period in question (viz., 
the inauguration of the Rebellion), deeply imbued with the fol- 
lowino; qtoss errors and delusions : 



'a a' 



* The day of the passage of the ordinance of secession in South Carolina, and 
-which was the practical birthday of the Rebellion. 



8 

(1.) They had come to believe that the whole population of the 
non-slaveholding States, with rare exceptions, were Abolitionists 
of the Phillips and Garrison school. 

(2.) That the people of those States were mean and mercenary ; 
that they were spiritless, cowardly and time-serving, ready to 
sacrifice every thing to their material interests ; that, on the con- 
trary the people of the rebel States were a brave, high-spirited, 
chivalric, generous race, superior in all things to those of the 
free States ; that one Southern man was equal, in a military point 
of view, to three of the North ; they regarded the name of 
" Yankee " as synonymous with all that was vile, dishonorable 
and contemptible ; and the epithet " Yankee" they applied indis- 
criminately to all north of Mason and Dixon's line, alike to the 
German of Pennsylvania, the adopted citizen of Wisconsin, the 
New Englander of Vermont, and the Knickerbocker of New 
York. By necessary consequence, they believed that these " Yan- 
kees" would succumb at the first sight of the standard of re- 
bellion and quietly yield to every demand. It is unnecessary 
to say how much this absurd but fatal delusion was fostered by 
the acts and the sayings of a large number of Northern men, 
justly denominated by John Randolph, in the bitterness of his 
withering satire, " dough- faces." 

(3.) The lower class of their population, the "white trash," 
comprising an immense numerical majority, had been taught to 
believe, and did believe, that the sole object of the " Yankee" was 
to raise the negro to an equality with, if not to a superiority over, 
them. 

(4.) The large proportion of that population, slaveholding and 
non-slaveholding, were therefore prepared to believe, and did be- 
lieve, as they were assured in every possible form by the leading- 
conspirators, that the election of Lincoln was the triumph of 
Abolitionism, that he was the favorite chief of that detested sect 
and the ready instrument of their will ; and that noiv the only 
remedy was to cast off the yoke of the usurper and the tyrant. 

(5.) The fatal heresy of the " right of secession" had for half a 
century been taught to those people as a fundamental truth, so 
that multitudes had embraced it as a primary article of their po- 
litical creed. Its corollary was " allegiance to a State," so that 
the destructive error prevailed that a citizen of one of those States 



owed supreme fealty and allegiance to his State and none (when 
they came in conflict) to his Country. 

How was it possible, it may be asked, that such errors and de- 
lusions could so thoroughly permeate such masses of men. The 
solution of the mystery is at hand ; it is found in the benighted 
ignorance of those masses ; and in those masses I include not 
merely the " white trash" just mentioned but many slaveholders. 
The great bulk of the latter live in seclusion on their plantations, 
seldom leaving their own State, and in numerous cases scarcely 
ever their own counties ; with limited means of even common 
school education, as is shown by the national census ; with a total 
suppression, as is universally known, of all liberty of speech and 
of the press on the subject of their " peculiar institution," seldom, 
if ever, in communion, either at home or abroad, with men of other 
parts of the world or other parts of their own country. This 
statement may seem exaggerated, but no man of ordinary observa- 
tion, who has visited those States, will thus characterize it.* 

* The reliable volumes (" Seaboard Slave States," " Texas Journey," and " A 
Journey in the Back Country,") of Frederick Law Olmstead, late General Secre- 
tary of the United States Sanitary Commission, fully confirm all these statements. 
A recent authentic publication as to the state of things in Texas (and it was the 
same in every rebel State) informs us that, " Perhaps there was never a people 
more bewitched, beguiled and befooled, than we were when we drifted into this 
Rebellion. We have been kept ao to an amazing extent. Our editors, our preach- 
ers and stump-speakers, inflamed the people with falsehoods of rights violated, 
constitutions broken, laws disregarded, on the one hand, and easy victories on the 
other ; and it is astonishing how easily the pretended secession was made and the 
war began. True, the people's ignorance made it an easy matter ; but that does 
not excuse the persevering misrepresentations. Statements like this (by one since 
an officer of high rank) were common : ' I will give a good bond to drink all the 
blood shed in a war caused by secession.' " 

Mr. James Brooks, now Member of Congress from New York, traveled exten- 
sively in the rebel States some years since, and published an account of his obser- 
vations and experiences. In relating a conversation he had in South Carolina 
with one of the nonslaveholding class, who could read and was intelligent beyond 
his fellows, he says : " This conversation gave us a good idea of the feelings 
which have wrought up the mass of the people in South Carolina to such an 
exasperation. This man is by no means a specimen of the intelligent Nullifiers, 
but he is a good specimen of the backwoodsmen who were to do the fighting. The 
hi<di mettled fellow had been first taught to ' damn the Yankees,' next, to cultivate 
an undue State pride ; then, to believe his State was omnipotent, and her continu- 
ance in the Union all-important, and indispensably necessary to support the Gov- 
ernment. He solemnly believed, and would have taken his oath, that South 
Carolina paid all the taxes of this vast Union. At a hundred million of dollars 
he set down her burden ! A foreign nation was about to subdue him and his 



10 

There are doubtless exceptions to this general rule; men of 
culture, of high literary attainments and of varied accomplishments 
are found in those States ; but the mass was without question in 
the condition I have stated. Ignorance is the genial soil in which 
to sow the seeds of error, delusion, prejudice ; abundantly have 
those seeds been sown, and alike bountiful and baneful has been 
the harvest. 

The wicked instigators of the Rebellion (while we cannot ac- 
cord to them sincerity in the belief even of the doctrine of the 
inherent right of secession) absolutely hieiv, as no intelligent ob- 
server can doubt, the utter groundlessness of all the other errors, 
delusions and prejudices above-mentioned ; they were men, for the 
most part, of intelligence and education, and what is more, they 
had had full opportunity, by personal association with the people 
of the North, of knowing the falsity of the appeals they made to 
" fire the Southern heart." But those appeals were successful ; 
and. thus the originating cause of the Rebellion is found in the 
mad ambition of the conspirators, inciting to practical action a 
people laboring under an amount of error, delusion and prejudice 
unexampled in the world. The institution of ' ; slavery" doubtless 
raised up this brood of conspirators and created a state of things 
favorable to the spread of these illusions : " Abolition" writers 
and orators furnished an abundant storehouse from which the 
conspirators drew the falsehoods on that subject, which they im- 
pressed as truths on their too willing listeners ; but further than 
just stated, neither " slavery" nor " abolition" was the immediate 
originating cause of the Rebellion. 

2. It is difficult to find language to describe the moral and legal 
offence involved in the Rebellion. To say that it is a crime of greater 
magnitude than any recorded in history is but feebly to express its 
true character. It was a cold-blooded, deliberate attempt to over- 
throw the Government of the United States, to destroy the Ameri- 
can nation, to inflict a deadly and fatal wound on the holy cause 
of free institutions and civil liberty here and everywhere, now 

State, and Lis pride rose on the reflection, and he was ready to throw his life 
away in attacking a fortified castle on an open raft ! Mr. Calhoun's well-instructed 
backwoodsmen of whom he boasted in Congress, are as ignorant of the extent, power, 
and complicated interests of this Government as arc the Rocky Mountain Indians." 
He fully confirms all I have said as to the non-slaveholding class. lie also equally 
confirms all my statements as to the ignorance, delusion and prejudice of that 
class of slaveholders, to whom I attribute those qualities. 



11 

and for ever ; it was treason, deep, damning and infamous. Its 
immediate consequences, to say nothing of mere material consid- 
erations, have been the destruction (including those on both 
sides) of at least half a million human lives, the grievous maim- 
ino\ wounding or sickness of another half million, and the cloth- 
ino- in mourning: of tens of thousands of households. For such a 
crime and for such consequences are those conspirators and their 
abettors legally responsible : they are responsible to God ; they 
are responsible to man. 

3. It is an undoubted fact that the Rebellion, from its begin- 
ning to its end, has been conducted by the rebels in a spirit of 
savage barbarity. The deliberate plot to murder President 
Lincoln on his way to Washington in February, 1861 ; the mas- 
sacre of the soldiers of the Massachusetts Sixth in the city of 
Baltimore on the loth of April, and the assassination of Colonel 
Ellsworth at Alexandria on the 26th of May in the same year, 
were but the fitting precursors of the horrible slaughter at Fort 
Pillow ; the revolting and incredible cruelties inflicted on the 
soldiers of the Republic at all the prisons and prison-pens in the 
rebel States — Richmond, Danville, Salisbury, Columbia, Charles- 
ton, Andersonville* indeed every place Avhere any of them were 

* At a public meeting at the Cooper Institute in April, 18G5, the Rev. J. I. Greer, 
Chaplain of the One Hundred and Eighty-third Ohio, stated that, of the Union 
prisoners sent from Andersonville to Wilmington a few weeks since, not less than 
two hundred and eighty, in consequence of their barbarous treatment in that 
charnel-house, had suffered the excruciating torment of the loss of their feet ; and 
upward of forty of those " footless" heroes arc now in hospital at David's Island, 
in the harbor of New York ! 

At the risk of sickening the reader, but in stern regard to truth, the following 
extract from the Port Royal South, of May 6, is added : 

" The steamer ' William P. Clyde' arrived here on the 3d, from Jacksonville, Fla., 
with nineteen Union officers and privates — part of a large number, supposed 
to be about 3,200, who are coming into Jacksonville every hour from the Ander- 
sonville prison-pen. The rebels brought them within a few miles of our lines 
and turned them loose. Nearly the whole number have already arrived at Jack- 
sonville and are being provided for as well as possible by the Quartermaster's and 
Commissary's Departments of General Vodge's district. They are now receiving 
clothing and other articles necessary to making a decent appearance in a civilized 
community. Many of them are badly troubled with scurvy, chronic diarrhoea 
and other diseases. About thirty poor fellows were left at Andersonville, prob- 
ably to die, as they were too sick to be removed. The following horrible account 
is furnished us by First Lieutenant M. G. Wilson, of the Ninety-ninth United 
States Colored Troops, who returned on the ' Clyde :' Statement of deaths among 



12 

confined in large or small numbers, whereby not less than fifty 
thousand as gallant and noble men as ever fought on any field 
were literally tortured to death or consigned to lingering and 
hopeless disease ; and the whole of this* infernal work finally con- 
summated by the deliberately-planned assassination of the head 
of the nation ! I do not dwell on those horrors — the bare men- 
tion of them is sufficient to cause a shudder through the civilized 
world. It is enough to say that these enormities could not Lave 
been perpetrated in any other country professing the Christian 
faith : and here they can be accounted for only from the dc. 
humanizing influence of slavery (as it has existed in the rebel 
States) on the white race, who had been under its operation for 
generations, and from the partial, if not the total, extinction of 
their moral sense by means of the crime of the Rebellion itself. 

The state of feeling existing in the rebel States at the begin- 
ning of the Rebellion, as already stated, the error, delusion, prej- 
udice, malignant hate, arrogant assumption of superiority, though 
not universal, were so prevalent that those deeds of matchless 
cruelty caused no shock to public sentiment there, but, on the 

the Union prisoners confined at Andersonville, Ga., for the eleven months ending 
January 81, 1S65. — February, 1864, 1 ; March, 2S2 ; April, 576 ; May, 70S; June, 
1,201 ; July, 1,748 ; August, 2,991 ; September, 2,677 ;' October, 1,595 ; Novem- 
ber, 494 ; December, 168 ; January, 1865, 199. Total, 12,640. The total number 
who have died at Andersonville sinco the establishment of that infernal pen 
exceeds 17,000." 

The preceding are but an insignificant part of this horrible record. The 
authentic evidence on this subject, which has already been furnished to the 
public, would fill a volume of hundreds if not of thousands of pages. 

Can it be believed that these awful barbarities had the deliberate sanction fo 
the rebel Congress? Yet here is the proof. Among the documents found in 
Richmond after its capture, and now on file in the office of the Secretary of War 
at Washington, is the following resolution, introduced into that body, read the 
first and second time, and made the special order for the secret session of February 
16, 1864: "Resolved, by the House of Representatives of the Confederate States, the 
Senate concurring, That we do adhere to our opinion that the so-called Emancipa- 
tion Proclamation of the President of the United States, and the enlistment of 
aegro slaves in the several Federal armies now opposed to us, are not among the 
acts of legitimate warfare, but are properly classed among such acts as the right 
to put to death prisoners of war without special cause, the right to vse poisoned 
weapons and the right to assassinate, and if persisted in, will justify this Govern- 
ment in the adoption of measures of retaliation." 

And, after this, who will refuse credence to the statements of a correspondent 
of au influential paper of this city, writing from Washington on the 16th of May, 



13 

contrary, were received with favor. Multitudes of those people 
regarded the torture and murder of a " Yankee" (as in former 
times the Turks viewed the killing of a Christian) as a work well 
pleasing to God, and entitling him who performed it to heavenly 
rewards. We are informed, by official authority, that the assas- 
sination of the President was planned by rebels in Canada and 
approved in Richmond ;* but however this may be, no impartial 
observer of the events of the last five years can doubt that this 
enormous crime was the legitimate, if not the necessary, fruit and 
result of the teachings of the rebel leaders, and of the spirit in 
which, they and their followers have conducted the war of the 
Rebellion ;t in other words, that the leaders are morally if not 

1S65 : " The question which has long been agitated as to who is responsible for the 
cruel treatment of our prisoners confined in Libby and other prisons in the South 
may now be considered as definitely settled, through no less a person that ex-rebel 
Senator Foote. It appears that Mr. Foote was a member of the Committee in the 
Senate to examine into the treatment of the prisoners and the reports of their 
harsh usage and starvation. His story, as told by his own relatives, show a 
deeper intention than has been generally supposed, and fastens upon Jeff. Davis 
and his Cabinet a crime both startling and appalling in its details. Mr. Foote, it is 
said, states that the investigations showed conclusive evidence that it was decided 
in Cabinet meeting to reduce the rations served out to the prisoners, that it 
should so weaken their constitutions in connection with the confinement that it 
would destroy them as soldiers, and make them when exchanged worthless. 
Senator Foote determined to report these facts to the Senate, but the balance of 
the Committee overruled him and suppressed the facts. My informant further 
states that it was on this point that the quarrel between Davis and Foote broke 
out afresh, which resulted in the latter leaving Richmond and seeking some seques- 
tered spot where such horrid deeds were not committed. Here, then, is the evi- 
dence conclusive of Jeff. Davis and associates' guilt in the diabolical deed of 
starving our prisoners ; a deed which makes the most stoical person shudder to 
contemplate. Men who will coolly and deliberately plan a scheme like that will 
conspire to assassinate a President or any other person. It is a fitting sequel 
that authors of such deeds should end their career in a cowardly manner, dressed 
in petticoats. No wonder Jeff. Davis' cloven foot revealed who he was." 

* President Johnson's proclamation of May 2d, 1865. 

f The teachings and the spirit referred to are perfectly illustrated by the follow- 
ing extract from a recent paper (April 26), published at Shreveport, La. The 
editor, in commenting on the assassination of the President, says : " In one of 
his messages he said, with grim and terrible satisfaction, that under all circum- 
stances our land would remain. Where the fierce Attila, calling himself ' the 
curse of God,' swept with his barbaric hordes, the historian records, as the marks 
of his ten-ible wrath, that ' he left only the sky and the earth remaining.' Attila, 
perhaps, joyed in the devastation. Abraham Lincoln, doubtless, did not. He 
may have felt pity, but no remorse ; and to fasten despotism upon a people free 
as himself, entitled to life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness, like himself, 



14 

legally responsible for this, the crowning crime of the Eebelliou. 
Such, beyond question, is nearly the universal, as it is the just, 
opinion of our people.* 

he would have stood unmoved and inflexible, and, with no eye turned to heaven, 
would have seen them swept from the earth, and only the land remaining, and felt 
himself a great Republican President, and one of the world's heroes. With all 
allowance for his amiable personal qualities, we yet know it to be true that 
Abraham Lincoln had as fell a purpose as ever existed in the bosom of despotism ; 
that the Southern people should be bereft of their liberties, subjugated to a Gov- 
ernment hateful to their inmost souls ; and ruled for ever, not by their own free 
will, but by the bayonets and the votes of the more populous North. He was the 
instrument of the North to effect upon us and our children this destructive, ruin- 
ous object. Despotism has ever been insupportable to a free people ; and, when 
practiced, even upon people whose spirits were broken and their pride degraded, 
its fit retribution has been the secret blow of the assassin, if not the open blow of 
the patriot. From 1*787 to 1861 no guard had a President of the United States. 
He was the chosen officer of a free people, with no more concern for his personal 
security than that of the humblest individual in the land. If the reign of despot- 
ism is again to be re-inaugurated at this day, and over this people, then let despot- 
ism and whoever may be its minions beware the deserved fate of tyrants." 

* From hundreds of proofs of the truth of this remark, I select the following : 
" At a meeting of the New York Board of Fire Insurance Companies held at the 
Insurance Rooms, No. 156 Broadway, on Monday, the following resolution was 
unanimously adopted and ordered to be published : ' Resolved, That in the pres- 
ence of this terrible crime, which is but a natural expression of that bitter malig- 
nity with which the Rebellion has been conducted from its inception, it would be 
a mockery to expect the nation, standing over the fresh grave of its noble, faith- 
ful and forgiving chief, to consent to strike hands with the bloody traitors whose 
instrument the assassin was, and permit them again to walk unscathed in the land 
which they have thus smitten anew.' " 

" San Francisco, April 17, 1865. — A large meeting of citizens was held at 
Piatt's Hall, on Sunday, the Mayor presiding. A series of resolutions were passed, 
among which was the following, which amply expresses the general feeling on 
this coast : ' The great, capacious, manly heart of Abraham Lincoln was generous 
enough to have embraced all within the forgiveness of its loving nature. And 
in their madness they have killed him. Before his death the atmosphere was 
filled with generous emotions and kind sympathj^. God have mercy on the souls 
of the rebel chiefs !' "When this was read there was great excitement, and the 
people cheered over and over again." 

" A large meeting of the cartmen of this city, was held Monday evening, in the 
Hall No. 05 Sixth Avenue, to take appropriate action on the death of the Presi- 
dent, and make preparations to attend his obsequies. The following resolution 
was adopted : 'Resolved, That the assassination of the President is but the culmina- 
tion of the crime against the nation which commenced four years ago ; that the 
same spirit which leveled the first gun against our flag in Charleston harbor, 
which initiated the murder in cold blood of the Union men of the South, which 
instigated the atrocities committed upon helpless prisoners, and which fired our 
city in the dead of night, inflamed the heart and guided the hand of the wretched 



15 

A subject of the deepest solicitude, and necessarily involved in 
the consideration of the question of the treatment of the rebels 
individually, is the reconciliation of the people of the two sec- 
tions of the country. The people of the States which have not 
united in the Rebellion are, to a man, ready, cheerfully ready, 

murderer, and justice demands that the malignant spirit of treason be utterly 
extinguished ; that all the penalties provided by law be meted out to the instiga- 
tors and perpetrators of the horrible crime known as the Rebellion, and that our 
land may know a just and abiding peace ; that the human race may never again 
be cursed by a war so bloody and unnatural, for the sake of our posterity, and in 
the name of civilization we demand that justice be done upon the traitors who 
have desolated our country.' " 

" At a special meeting of the Vestry of Trinity Church, held ou Saturday, the 
15th day of April, 1865, the following resolution was adopted : 'Resolved, That while 
we regard the act by which our beloved country has thus been, through indescrib- 
able malice and fury, plunged into the deepest affliction* as one of those crimes of 
which no language can adequately paint the atrocity, of which the history of 
Europe has not for many centuries furnished a parallel, of which our own history 
has afforded thus far no example, and than which no history presents a more 
detestable and infamous act to the view, we cannot but hold it to have been 
dictated by the spirit, which, from the commencement of our national troubles, 
has sympathized with the enemies of the public peace, and aided and abetted the 
Rebellion now, as we trust, subdued ; a spirit whose tendencies and essential 
character had previously been manifested in the July riots, in this city, in 1S63 ; 
in the attempt to destroy the city by incendiarism in November last, and in the 
systematic outrages inflicted on our captured soldiers in the prisons of the South." 

These show the concurrence in this view of all classes of our citizens. 

And how can we doubt the correctness of this prevailing opinion, when we 
read in a leading rebel paper such articles as the following — in the Chatta?ioogcc 
Rebel (published at Selma) of the 20th of April, 1865 : " William H. Seward, the 
cold-blooded and heartless political miscreant, who guided the infernal policy 
which plunged us into this bloody and desolating war, has been arrested by an 
angry God in the midst of his iniquities, and has paid the penalty of his crimes 
at the hands of an unknown assassin. Abe Lincoln, too, the political mountebank 
and professional joker, whom Nature intended for the ring of a circus, but whom 
a strange streak of popular delusion, elevated to the Presidency — he, also, has 
fallen. His career was as short as it was bloody and infamous. He has gone to 
answer before the bar of God, for the innocent blood which he has permitted to 
be shed, and his efforts to enslave a free people." 

Let it not be said that this is only " a newspaper article ;" conductors of public 
journals do not utter sentiments revolting to their patrons. 

And when we add that at a large meeting at Shreveport, La., on the 26th of 
April, at which, among others, were present the rebel Generals E. Kirby Smith, 
Price, Buckner and Governor Reynolds, Colonel Flournoy of the rebel army ap- 
pealed to the feelings of his auditory and received their hearty concurrence in his 
views. He concluded his address by a glowing panegyric on Booth the assassin, 
whom he " compared to Brutus the assassin of Caesar, and predicted for him (Booth) 
a like and enduring fame !" — Shreveport Sentinel, April 27, 1865. 



16 

for this reconciliation. They are read}', "with exemplary una- 
nimity, to cast the veil of oblivion over the past ; to pardon 
the grievous wrongs they have suffered as a people and as indi- 
viduals, and to welcome back to brotherhood the people of the 
rebel States ; but for their own sake, as well as for the sake of 
those people, this receiving and welcoming back must be in such a 
manner as to insure its mutual cordiality, and the perpetuity of 
the blessings to flow from it to all. It is manifest from the state- 
ments already made of the state of feeling in the rebel States at 
the commencement of the Rebellion, that no real reconciliation can 
be effected so long as the errors, delusions and prejudices, men- 
tioned as then existing there, continue. In the very first place, 
the people of those States must at once and for ever part with the 
absurdly (I may say ridiculously) false idea of their own " superi- 
ority," and the consequent inferiority of the rest of the nation. 
It may well be believed that the delusion of their superior physi- 
cal courage and " fighting capacity ;" their idea that one man of 
the South was, in this regard, equal to three of the North, has 
been dispelled by the hard but inexorable " logic of facts." The 
innumerable individual instances of the sublimest heroism, and the 
steadiest courage in our soldiers ; the skillful handling of large 
Union armies in every one of their States ; the numerous brilliant 
victories which have given our officers and men a universality and 
immortality of fame ; and our final triumphant success will have 
presented the truth in this particular in the clearest light to 
the mind alike of the slave aristocrat and of the commonest of 
the " white trash." They cannot but be satisfied by evidence 
equally plain and irrefragable that they were laboring under 
a similar delusion in their idea of the mean, mercenary, 
selfish, craven character of our people, for they have seen 
throughout every quarter of the North, even its remotest 
hamlet, constant exhibitions of unselfish patriotism, of stern devo- 
tion to duty, of generous charity, indeed of every quality that 
elevates and adorns humanity ; they have seen life, fortune, do- 
mestic comfort, personal ease, love of kindred, every thing offered 
in profusion on the altar of the country. Moreover, in our will- 
ingness to receive them again into the common fold, they will see 
a spirit of elevated magnanimity and of true Christian love, of 
which the world has as yet furnished few if any examples. If 



17 

there be any of high or low degree in those States whose eyes are 
not opened by this overwhelming array of facts, such, beyond all 
doubt, are unfit to be " American citizens." But on every prin- 
ciple of human reasoning and of human action, it cannot be long 
before this great but indispensable revolution in the feelings and 
opinions of the mass of people of the rebel States will occur, and 
produce its beautiful and lasting fruits of peace, harmony and 
love. 

In considering the subject of .the restoration of harmony be- 
tween the people of the two sections, it must ever be kept in 
mind that the leading conspirators and the arrogant slave aristo- 
crats of the South, form but a very small minority of that people 
and that our business of conciliation is not with them chiefly, but 
mainly with the millions of whites, whom they have so long held 
in subordination, and the nearly equal number of blacks, whom 
they have so long held in slavery. The idea that that South 
which is to be reconciled and conciliated is the slave aristocracy, 
is an idea alike fallacious and injurious, and the sooner it is aban- 
doned for ever, the better for the great cause in which we have, 
by the favor of Heaven, so signally triumphed. No ; it is not 
with that handful that we have to deal, but our business is with 
the seven or eight millions of other human beings dwelling on 
that soil. As to that numerically insignificant minority, we offer 
to them all, with comparatively few exceptions, the great privilege 
of returning " home," on the sole condition that, when they are re- 
admitted to the house of their fathers, they will conduct as brothers 
of the household, and not as strangers, enemies, aliens or masters ; 
not as " superiors," but as equals. 

Having thus concisely reviewed the originating cause of the 
Rebellion, the crime it involved, and the spirit in which the 
rebels have conducted it, we come now to speak of the treatment 
to be extended to rebels individually. 

(1.) The very first idea that occurs here is the manifest dis- 
tinction between different classes of those people, and I assert no 
more than I know to be the feeling of all in all parts of the Union* 
who have been steadfast in its support, that no terms or conditions 
are to be imposed, and no pains or penalties inflicted on the mass of 
the people of the South. They have grievously erred, but they have 
received an equally grievous punishment in the great suffering 



18 

they have endured in the unholy cause into which their wicked 
leaders seduced them. May Heaven forgive them as we do ! 

(2.) In determining this question, there are various classifica- 
tions to be made of the comparatively small remainder of that 
people. " Treason " is conceded by all to be the very worst of 
crimes ; that its punishment should be in proportion necessarily 
follows. But it is the dictate alike of reason, justice and mercy, 
that a discrimination should lie made in the punishment of the 
guilty, while we at the same time know that punishment to a 
proper extent is demanded by every consideration of humanity ; 
that it is required alike by God's law and man's, and that if we 
would, we could not as moral and responsible beings, avoid the 
performance of that duty, though we fully realize that in its per- 
formance we are bound by equally high and imperative conside- 
rations to temper justice with mercy ; to limit, as far as consistent 
with the public safety and with true mercy the number to be pun- 
ished, and of that number to inflict the extreme penalty on as few as 
possible, and among the rest to graduate it according to their 
several circumstances. 

(3.) Nor is this a matter of difficult practical solution. First, a 
small number of those men should without delay be indicted for 
the crime of treason. The humane, just and enlightened would> 
it would seem of necessity, include in this class the following: 

(a.) The two surviving members of the Cabinet of Mr. Buchanan 
and the then Vice-President, all of whom, witli unspeakable deprav- 
ity, betrayed their country by using their official positions to in- 
augurate the Rebellion ; and with them should suffer that man, who, 
alone of his brethren of the .Supreme Court of the United States, 
prostituted to the same unhallowed purpose the august office con- 
fided to him by his country. 

(b.) The representative head, called the President, of the Rebel 
Confederacy, and all who have been members of his Cabinet. 

(c) Those members of the Senate and House of Representatives 
of the United States who, while in the exercise of their sacred 
trusts at the Capitol of the nation, deliberately, and with malice 
aforethought, committed the crime of treason in the face of the 
solemn and repeated warnings then and there given by their col- 
league who now (wonderful coincidence !) is invested with the 



19 

power of making practically manifest the truth of what he then 
so impressively declared. 

(d.) Each and every man who has by direct and responsible act 
participated in the murder, by torture in rebel prisons, of the 
soldiers of the Republic. The whole world stood aghast a few 
years since at the atrocities of the Sepoys of India ; those were 
" tender mercies " compared with the cruelties just mentioned. 

(e.) Each and every man who has by direct act participated in 
the murder of Union citizens in any rebel State. 

(/.) Those who have acted the infamous part of rebel emis- 
saries and representatives in Europe ; * who by a continued 
system of flagitious falsehood have obtained there the material 
means of sustaining the Rebellion, and by which means alone it was 
sustained after the first eighteen months of its existence, and who 
have been ceaseless in their efforts to bring discredit, disgrace and 
ruin on their country. Thousands of the deluded victims of their 
frauds and deceptions in England and other parts of Europe would 
rejoice in common with us to know that such criminals had met 
the just reward of their treason and their fraud. 

Probably many regard the above list as too limited ; possibly 
others may regard it as too extensive ; but let those latter con- 
sider that the aggregate number is in reality inconsiderable. 

But humanity itself demands that men guilty of treason, and 
such a treason, every one of whom is morally guilty of the murder 
of all who have fallen in this war, and many of whom (as those 
mentioned under the third and fourth subdivisions) are guilty of 
actual murder, should at least be placed in a position to receive 
the severest punishment known to human law. Let no misplaced 
philanthropy, no unmanly sentimentality, no delusive idea of 
clemency be interposed between such criminals and their indict- 

* The emissary Mason, in. a letter dated April 2,1, 1865, published in England, 
and in which he attempts to defend the leaders of the Rebellion against the charge 
of complicity in the assassination of the President, dared to say : " As to the crime 
which has been committed, the people of the South will know, as will equally all 
well-balanced minds, that it is the necessary offspring of all these scenes of blood- 
shed and murder in every form of unbridled license, which have signalized the 
invasion of the South by Northern armies, unrebuked certainly, and therefore in. 
stigated. by their leaders, and those over them." If the combined crimes of treason 
and the blackest moral perjury are deserving of punishment, what should be the 
fate of this man ? 



20 

ment for treason. We are a civilized, a Christian, a humane 
people ; as such we now owe a stern duty to ourselves, our pos- 
terity, our country and the world. Let us with manly courage and 
dignity perform it ! 

There is no formal or technical difficulty in indicting each and 
every of those men for treason. Under the Constitution, treason 
consists in " levying war against the United States," or " adhering 
to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort." The rebels in or- 
ganized association "levied war" against the United States; 
they were thus legally and practically " their enemies •" all men- 
tioned in the preceding class were the participants in the actual 
" levying of war," or, what is tantamount, " adhered and gave aid 
and comfort " to those who were, and all were thus alike guilty of 
treason. It cannot be material ivhere such " aid and comfort " 
were given ; wherever given by citizens of the United States, it 
renders them guilty of the crime. The prosecution of the in- 
dictment when found, and the carrying out the judgments in cases 
of conviction, rests with the Government, and in their hands will 
the people trustfully and cheerfully leave it. How many (if any) 
and which of the convicted criminals shall receive the extreme 
penalty must be decided by the President, with the aid of his offi- 
cial advisers ; that this decision will be governed by the highest 
considerations of duty, we unhesitatingly believe. From the ne- 
cessity of the case, in many instances (such as the continued ab- 
sence from the country of the party) the indictment, if found, 
could never be tried ; in other instances reasons might exist for 
not bringing on the trial ; in cases of actual trial and conviction 
the good of the country might be promoted by suspension -or com- 
mutation of sentence, or even by pardon ; all these matters rest 
with the constituted authorities of the nation. But the voice of 
mercy, justice, national safety, cries aloud for the indictment for 
treason in each and all of the above cases. The moral influence 
of that proceeding would be alike beneficial and powerful, even 
if. not one single step further were taken ; the indictment for a 
crime so awful would for ever hang in terrorem over the head of 
the guilty criminal ; would render him harmless for future injury 
to his country, and would keep him during life in a most healthful 
dread of a repetition of his crime ; it would operate, too, as a ter- 
rible and continuing warning to this generation and to many gene- 



21 

rations to come. It is possible that the President may consider 
that the ends of justice will be accomplished, and the safety of 
the country insured without bringing to the scaffold any of these 
great criminals ; if, on the contrary, he sees fit to make this 
dreadful example of any one or more of them, the people will 
cheerfully respond, Amen ! The vast majority of the humane, the 
just and the enlightened of our citizens, at this moment regard the 
infliction of the extreme penalty on one or more of the traitors as 
imperiously demanded by the plainest dictates of humanity and 
of duty. Time may alter their opinion. 

It is to be remembered that in our country there is no power, 
executive, legislative or judicial, to banish, as can be done in Eng- 
land ; and no power to deprive a citizen of his privileges as such, 
except after conviction for crime. It cannot be doubted that the 
" good of the country " requires that it should be for ever freed from 
the presence and the influence of the whole baud of traitors above- 
mentioned, with perhaps an occasional exception. Objects so ob- 
noxious and loathsome to the Republic cannot be tolerated here* 
Indictments for treason willfrighten away those still among us, 
and will for ever keep away those now in foreign lands, and thus 
the practical benefits of lawful and effectual banishment will be 
attained* 

Second. Very few will doubt that the following persons (while 
unpardoned) should not be permitted to hold any office of trust, 
honor or profit under the Government of the United States :f 

* An amusing, but by no means an alarming, spectacle is presented to us at this 
moment in the union of two most opposite extremes, namely, the pure, original 
Abolitionist of the one part, and the earnest sympathizer with the Rebellion and with 
the leading traitors of the other part, in urgent and clamorous opposition to any pun- 
ishment of the traitors. It is quite manifest that no union of such discordaut 
materials can be for good ; and it is equally manifest that it must be wholly without 
influence on the Government or on the people. 

f Congress has not the power to declare by law this incapacity, nor has the President 
that power, and no court can adjudge it till after a conviction for treason ; but in 
this Government there is a power equally operative, namely, the " Voice of the 
People " — the calm, deliberate, well- considered sentiment of the American people 
alwaj-s has had, haa now, always should have, and always will have, the power of 
law. Under the influence of this sentiment, the appointing power would confer 
no office on unpardoned traitors ; and if unfortunately any such should be sent from 
any State to either House of Congress, each House has the constitutional power to 
refuse admission to or to expel such person ; and thus practically the same results 
follow, as if they were produced by statute or by a judicial judgment. 



22 

(a.) Every member of any State Convention, who voted in that 
convention for the ordinance of secession.* 

(b.) All Governors of the rebel States during the Eebellion. 

(c.) The rebel Vice-President, and all who have been members 
of the Senate or House of Representatives of the rebel Congress. 

(d.) All who have been members of rebel State Legislatures. 

(e.) All officers in the rebel army and navy above certain 
grades (and it would not be unreasonable to say, above the grade 
of colonel in the army and lieutenant in the navy), and all in 
army or navy of any grade, who have been officers of the United 
States Army or Navy.t 

* Doubtless some of this class should be exempted from the general rule. The 
courageous Holden, of North Carolina, signed the ordinance of secession, under a 
physical and moral duress of unexampled severity ; and he has since heroically 
exhibited his devotion to the Union. There may be others of other classes who, for 
special reasons, should have the privilege of a similar exemption ; all such cases, 
we all know, will be calmly and kindly considered by the President. 

f It is a grave question whether Robert E. Lee ought not to be indicted for 
treason. He violated his repeated oaths of allegiance and fidelity; he deserted 
the flag of his country ; he carried with him, and doubtless communicated to the 
enemy, avast fund of information derived from his official position as a member of the 
military family of Lieutenant General Scott ; he falsified his assertion that he left his 
country to fight for his Stale; he has, by his personal and family influence, aided the 
Rebellion more effectually than any other single individual ; he witnessed, day by 
day, for years, without sympathy, regret or protest, the murder by torture in the 
horrible pi-isons in Richmond of thousands of the gallant heroes of our Army, when 
a single word from him would have saved their lives and their indescribable 
sufferings ; he is still an unrepentant impudent rebel, for, notwithstanding all the 
kindness and magnanimity shown him in the terms of his surrender, he had the 
hardihood immediately after to issue an order to his disbanded army, in which he 
says, " I congratulate you that your conduct has endeared you to your countrymen^ 
I bid you farewell with increased admiration of your constancy and devotion to 
your country : you take with you the satisfaction that proceeds from the conscious- 
ness of duly faith/tdly performed." Instantly on the issuing of this order, the man 
should have been arrested for violation of his parole in its spirit if not in its 
letter; for if the sentiments put forth in that document were adopted and acted on 
by those to whom it was addressed, they never could become in reality " Citizens 
of the Republic." The unhallowed fires of hatred to the Union would perpetually 
burn in their hearts, to burst out at any convenient time into treason. It is to be 
hoped that the Government will take the case of this individual into serious con- 
sideration, and decide whether he should not be subjected to a traitor's doom. 

There are other rebel officers whom it would seem impossible to pardon : the 
General (Forrest) who perpetrated the savage massacre of Fort Pillow ; the General 
(Picket) who ordered twenty-one prisoners of war, soldiers of the First North Carolina 
Loyal Regiment, to be placed in a row and shot; the wretch (Quantrell) who burned 
Lawrence, and murdered indiscriminately her men, women and children. These 



23 

(/.) Such private and influential individuals (uot embraced in 
either of the above classes) as actively incited the Rebellion, and 
were conspicuous in inaugurating and sustaining it ; a sample of 
these is the infamous Ruffin who boasted that he put the match 
to the first gun fired at Fort Sumter. On the same list stand 
those editors who, from the beginning to the very last moment, 
have contributed so much, so malignantly and with so much ex- 
travagance of falsehood to fan and keep alive the flame of re- 
bellion. The injury done by them is incalculable. * 

To say nothing of other official positions, what friend of the 
Union would not absolutely revolt at seeing either House of Con- 
gress desecrated, disgraced and endangered by the presence of 

and all other similar monsters, are guilty of the double crime of treason and of 
actual murder. Their escape from the gallows would be a stigma on the humanity 
of the age. 

* D. J. Baldwin, an honored citizen of Texas, and one of the few loyalists in that 
State, in a letter dated May 8, 1865, says: "Monstrous criminals as Davis and 
Lee are, the rebel editors have been their most efficient workers. Take a specimen 
or two of their efforts to keep up the spirit of their waning causa It was solemnly 
asserted, and never denied by them, that Lee accepted four million dollars 
in gold as a ransom for the city of Philadelphia, in consideration of which 
he did not occupy and pillage the city. Another, that General Breckinridge occu- 
pied the President's House at Washington, and Jubal Early the Capitol, with their 
victorious troops; and the names of the soldiers were given who raised the rebel 
fia? on the dome of the Capitol. These are two fair specimens of rebel military 
news. In civil and social matters they characterized and published biographies of 
our late President, as a bastard son of a mulatto woman by a drunken pauper ; rep- 
resenting Northern society as disorganized ; women corrupted, and men sunk in 
venality, lechery, and cowardice. And they are the men who have given the most 
efficient aid and comfort to the Rebellion. They did this at the bidding of Davis 
and his minions in rebellion and crime. They have given it hope and heart, which 
but for them and their acts it could not have had." 

Down even to the last moment has the utterance of those monstrous and malignant 
falsehoods been continued by this class of men. The Chattanooga Rebel, of April 
21, 1865, contains the following statement of the condition of things at Washing- 
ton after the assassination of the President : " The last dispatches exhibit a most 
shocking and horrible state of society. The President and prime minister killed 
by assassins, and the new President and the Secretary of War murdered by a mob 
which has obtained and holds possession of the Capital of the nation. Other cities 
sacked, and a great popular revolution against the rulers impending. While their 
armies are devastating our land, their own down-trodden populace, infuriated by 
tyranny and driven to despair by want, burst the bonds of law, and a reign of 
terror and of ruin is estahlished. That nation which prided itself upon its strength 
and prosperity, finds three different Presidents occupying its Executive Chair within 
the space of a single month, two of whom were murdered ; discord and anarchy 
riding rampant and ruling the hour." 



24 

any one of that traitor band, until at least lie had given the most 
unequivocal evidence of genuine repentance, and had received 
pardon from the President. 

Confiscation of the property of the persons above-mentioned, 
in both the first and second classes, is eminently due to justice : (1.) 
justice to themselves ; (2.) justice to the country which, through 
their instrumentality, is subjected to a debt of three thousand 
millions of dollars, and to all its burdensome consequences. 

Every individual embraced in this second class ought to be 
profoundly grateful if he is exempted from the punishment uni- 
versally awarded by human laws to Treason. The President 
possesses the merciful prerogative of pardon ; his character and 
his solemn declarations alike show, that in suitable cases this 
power will be exercised with a pleasure proportioned to the pain, 
which the infliction of punishment causes to every generous 
heart. 

It is earnestly hoped that none of the foregoing suggestions will 
be considered as indicating the slightest feeling of revenge ; that 
feeling is wholly unworthy the national dignity ; we have con- 
quered, triumphantly conquered ; magnanimity, gentleness to the 
vanquished, so far as consistent with imperative duty, will be our 
crowning honor. These cases of disqualification and even of con- 
fiscation are within the modifying power of the Presidential pre- 
rogative, and that power will surely be exercised in every proper 
case. i 

Having thus briefly considered the treatment of the rebels 
individually in reference to actual punishment, it remains to speak 
of another branch of the subject not less important, namely, the 
course to be adopted in regard to the interior, domestic or social 
condition of that people ; in other words, in regard to " society" 
there. The term " reconstruction of the States" is loosely and in- 
accurately, though by no means infrequently used ; the term " re- 
construction of society," in respect to those States, is a term of 
practical import and significance ; and this matter is of necessity 
involved in the general question of the treatment of the rebels as 
individuals. The truth of the proposition that " society" there 
must be " reconstructed" is self-evident. The annihilation of the 
cherished institution of slavery involves radical "social changes," 
the practical resumption by those people of their place in the 



25 

Union, after the events of the last five years, requires for the 
peace, comfort and harmony of us all, their abandonment of those 
errors, prejudices and delusions of which mention has already been 
made ; or at least the total cessation of all open manifestations of 
them. Without this, " reconciliation," sincere and true, cannot be 
hoped for. The habits of thought of that people, the manners, the 
false estimate of themselves and the consequent false estimate of 
the people of the non-slaveholding States, the tyranny of caste 
as to the non-slaveholding white class among themselves, all of 
which are the fruits of the existence there for so many generations 
of the institution of slavery, have created a " state of society" in 
those States, which has received its eternal death in the results of 
the Rebellion. " Old things have passed away and all things 
have become new," and to the " things" thus " become new," must 
the slave aristocrat and his sympathizers now conform themselves 
or go into voluntary or involuntary exile. When we speak of 
" Southern society" as heretofore existing, we of necessity mean 
only that composed of the slaveholder and his associates ; for, so- 
cially as well as politically, no other " society" has ever been 
known or recognized within the rebel States. The very first step 
in this " reconstruction" is the yielding up for ever by them of their 
arrogant fancy of " superiority," an idea acquiesced in, fostered, 
encouraged (in sadness be it said) by many, alas ! too many, of 
our people, those already mentioned as the John Randolph " dough- 
faces" of the North.* After the stubborn facts of the last few 

* Notwithstanding the overwhelming triumph of the Union Army, this delusion 
of " superiority " and this contemptuous opinion of the " Yankee" are still ram- 
pant, as we know by authentic letters from every conquered city in that region — 
Savannah, Charleston, Richmond, — furnish abundant evidence. Rebel officers have 
dared to ostentatiously wear the " rebel gray " in the streets of those cities, and 
even in the Capital of the nation and in Northern cities. Witness, too, the super- 
cilious impudence of Wade Hampton at the surrender of Johnston ; the brazen 
hardihood of Davis in his proclamation of the 5th of April from Danville, in which 
he says, that " no peace shall ever be made with the infamous invaders of our 
territory ;" the impertinence of the rebel officers confined as prisoners at Fortress 
Monroe, in adding at the end of their names, in a published letter on the assassina- 
tion of the President, the odious letters " C. S. A." 

A letter of April 26, 1865, from Washington, says: " Those who went hence 
to Dixie, four years ago, are returning by scores, generally in good health, shab- 
bily dressed, defiant, and far from being hopeless in the ultimate success of their 
cause." 

By a letter from Charleston of the 15th of April, we learn that: "The news 
of Lee's surrender arrived here by the ' Oceanus.' In the short space of a few 



26 

years, there is no longer a shadow of excuse for this arrogance. 
The facts have demonstrated the existence in profuse abundance 
among the heretofore despised and hated " Yankees" of the 
highest qualities of man, moral and physical courage, liberality, 
philanthropy, magnanimity, unsurpassed military skill, religious 
faith and reliance. 

The change from " society" constituted as society in the Rebel 
States has been, to that in which no slave will be found ; in which 
labor in its varied forms will be, as it should be, among civilized 
people, honorable and not degrading ; in which thousands of immi- 
grants from the non-slaveholding States and from foreign coun- 
tries will form a part of the community ; in which the hereto- 
fore despised multitudes of the subordinate white race will 
certainly, though gradually, be restored to manhood ; and in which 
the " slave" is to be a " free" man : this change is indeed as total 

hours the pardon of all the late rebels was discussed and considered as a fact. 
But it was received as a right merely. No gratitude was expressed toward the 
great General who forgave the great wickedness of this people." 

A letter from Richmond, dated some days after its surrender, states that : " To- 
day there have been over a hundred rebel officers on the streets, most of them in 
full uniform, to say nothing of privates. Their hatred and bitterness has not 
abated one iota ; they would do all the injury they could, and it is to be hoped 
that the order will soon be issued to register our enemies, and put an end to the 
parading of Confederate uniforms as a matter of glory and honor !" 

Those instances might be indefinitely multiplied. Nor has Northern " toady- 
ism " ceased. The colored troops were not permitted to participate in the first 
grand review at Richmond ; a colored sentinel was removed from the house of 
General Lee's wife out of regard to her feelings, when her own husband had a 
few days before made the strongest possible appeal to the rebel Congress and 
people to send 300,000 slaves into the rebel army as soldiers ; ministers of the 
gospel, belonging to the Christian Commission, paid an obsequious visit to the 
same General (an act since emphatically repudiated by the Commission by the 
dismissal of the offender) ; a Northern artist, about the same time, asked of the 
same General the privilege of taking the photographs of himself and the half 
dozen rebels that had formed his suite ; some of our officers, on Lee's arrival at 
Richmond, as a paroled rebel prisoner, saluted him as they woidd have saluted 
Lieutenant-General Grant; the officer, who received the surrender of one of the 
large rebel armies, out of regard to the feelings of the commander of that arm}' 
and of the rebels surrendering with him, prohibited the presence of representa- 
tives of the loyal press on the occasion ; an officer, whose character is vouched 
for by an eminent editor of this city, writes from Richmond on the 12th of April, 
that : " An officer applied to one of the commanding Generals for quarters, and 
told him he would like to take a certain house. ' Whose is it ?' ' It is that of an 
avowed secessionist of the blackest kind — the most infernal villain in the Confed- 
eracy.' ' Oh, certainly,' replied the General, ' you shall have it. If he's a rebel, 



27 

and radical as it will be enduring. To this change the old " society" 
must yield ; the " society" hereafter will be in all senses " free" 
and not " slave." It may be said, that the heretofore ruling class 
will not be reconciled to the new order of things : then, as Gen- 
eral Wool once happily said, " they may go, but they must leave 
to us their land." Again, all there must exhibit at least outward 
respect to the Republic and its official representatives, civil and 
military, who may be placed among them. The fatal heresy of 
supreme allegiance to a State must be believed, if at all, in silence; 
no expression of contempt or hatred of the United States should 
be tolerated.* Above all, full and entire liberty of the press, as 
it now exists in the non-slaveholding States, must exist there. 
And what a field is here for enlightened and patriotic editors ! 
How long, under the potent influence of a free press, would it be 
before the bright light of truth would shed its beneficent radiance 

of course you can have it for Government use. "What is liis name ? ' Brigadier- 
General Winder, of the rehel army.' ' No-o-o-o !' said the General ; ' No, you 

can't have his house. Why, he was a classmate of mine at West Point !' 

If you wish a favor from headquarters here, put on a gray uniform, and you can 
get what you like. The officers of the late rebel army swagger about the streets, 
sneering at the Union officers and are being coddled by the women of the town. 
There appear to be more rebels in the city than Union men." 

Many similar acts have dishonored us since our triumph over the Rebellion ; 
and almost universally those acts are received not as evidences of generosity 
and kindness, but as matters of just due and of right. Every such exhibition 
confirms the Southern rebel in his illusion of " superiority," and postpones the 
day that must ultimately come when that illusion will vanish for ever, and the 
coming of which, as before remarked, is an indispensable prerequisite to real 
reconciliation. 

* General Burnside set the proper example on this subject. Soon after he 
assumed command at Newbern, he issued the following wise and timely order : 
" General Orders, No. 28— Headquarters Department of North Carolina, New- 
bern, April 28, 1862. — Whoever, after the issue of this order, shall, within the 
limits to which the Union arms may extend in this Department, utter one word 
against the Government of these United States will be at once arrested and 
closely confined. It must be distinctly understood that treason, expressed or im- 
plied, will meet with a speedy punishment. The Military Governor of Newbern 
is charged with the strict execution of this order within the bounds of his control. 
" By command of Major-General Burnside. 

" Lewis Richmond, Assistant Adjutant-General." 

Had this example been faithfully followed in Washington, in Baltimore and 
in every part of the rebel territory, as it became subjected to the power of the 
Union, what numbers of valuable lives and what amount of pecuniary expendi- 
ture would have been saved to us ! 



28 

over those people and dispel the moral and mental darkness in 
which, on one subject especially, they have never ceased to grope. 
Again, in view of the great demoralization produced by the war 
throughout that region, and of the multitudes of soldiers of the 
late rebel army who will abound there, we may, for awhile, rea- 
sonably apprehend numerous acts of law-less violence* insecurity 
to the persons and property of those who have not sympathized in 
the Rebellion ; interference in the free expression of loyal opinion ; 
words and acts of disloyalty to the Government, and other acts 
inconsistent with domestic quiet and security, and with the spread 
and growth of true Union sentiment. All this must be effectively 
and thoroughly repressed. It may be asserted that such a state of 
things cannot be brought about, but this assertion implies that 
common sense, as well as all regard to self-interest, have deserted 
that people ; and besides contradicts our uniform experience of the 
facility with which men accommodate themselves to inevitable ne- 
cessity. This repression may be effected by civil power, or it may 
require military force. As to the latter, it is highly probable, nay, 
certain, that for a season its use will be indispensable in many 
parts of the rebel States, and to this end common prudence re- 
quires that a portion of our veteran army be retained there ; as 
much additional force as may be requisite for this purpose exists 
in abundance on the spot : a force which surely the rebels can have 
no scruple to our using, inasmuch as its use for military pur- 
poses was deliberately sanctioned and authorized and declared to 
be right by the rebel Congress at a period when men do not lie, 
namely, in its expiring agonies. This force, under the command 
of the humane, brave and experienced officers of our noble army 

* The following extract shows what may not unreasonably be apprehended for 
the present in some portions of the rebel States. The Alexandria Journal, May 
1, says : " Scouts from Fredericksburg report that that city and vicinity need the 
protection of the Government against rebel officers and soldiers, disbanded from 
Lee's army, who are now marauding upon the provisions and property of the 
Inhabitants. Young men belonging to respectable families, who have been in the 
army, swear they will not work for a living, and devote themselves to plunder. 
Applications have been made to General Augur for a Provost-Marshal's establish- 
ment at Fredericksburg, to protect the citizens in their peaceful pursuits. The same 
thing will have to be done throughout Virginia. A letter from the borders of Loudon 
County, dated on Friday last, informs us that constant incursions are being made 
by these paroled rebel soldiers into Maryland, who drive off horses, cattle, etc., 
and tear down and destroy every American flag displayed in that neighborhood." 



29 

■will be economical, safe and effective.* The dreadful state of 
things brought about by the Rebellion and the deep-seated errors 
and delusions from which it sprung, will, for a season, require 
more or less of military government in all those States ; it will be 
required till the most malignant of the slave aristocracy are dis- 
posed of by punishment or voluntary exile, and till truth and 
reason have time to operate. But earnest is the hope, that the 
necessity for the use of this force may be temporary ; it must be 
so, unless the dogged obstinacy or the inveterate, unreasoning hate 
of those, who have been, and would be again if they dared, 
traitors, demand its long continuance. 

It cannot, judging from the ordinary motives of human action 
and the plainest principles of human reasoning, as has been already 
stated, be long before most of those men, and certainly the vast 
multitudes of the down-trodden whites of the South, will ap- 
preciate the benignity, the blessedness, the priceless value of the 
Constitution and the Union ; they will yet (and soon, we hope,) 
love them as their Revolutionary fathers did. To effect these ben- 
eficent results, the people of the North, while extending cordially 
the hand of brotherhood to the people of the South, must carefully 
maintain their own self-respect and mark their sense of the great- 
ness of the crime that has been committed, by refusing to notorious, 
blatant and unrepentant rebels the courtesies of social life, by 
sternly prohibiting among us any exhibition, by dress,t word or 

* On this subject we have the emphatic testimony of the rebel commander-in- 
chief. General Lee, in his letter of February 15, 1865, to the rebel Congress, 
says : " The negroes under proper circumstances will, in my opinion, make effi- 
cient soldiers. Under good officers and good instruction, I do not see why they 
should not become soldiers. They possess all the physical qualifications, and 
their habits of obedience constitute a good foundation for discipline. They fur- 
nish a more promising material than many armies of which we read in history, 
which owe their efficiency to discipline alone." 

If they would make good soldiers in the cause of " slavery," it needs no reason- 
ing to prove that they would make good soldiers in the cause of " freedom." 

f This matter, it seems by the following order, is fully understood by General 
Stoneman, and his example should immediately be followed everywhere: 

"Headquarters District of East Tennessee, Knoxville, Tenn., May 6, 1865. — Gen- 
eral Orders No. 31 — Hereafter, any person found within the limits of this command 
wearing or having about his person the badges, insignia, or uniform of an officer of 
the late Confederate armies, will be considered as guilty of an act of hostility toward 
the United States Government, and will subject himself to arrest and imprisonment. 
By command of Major-General Stoneman. G. M. Bascom, Major and A. A. G. 
—Official, G. M. Bascom, A. A. G." 



30 

act, of Southern arrogance and of rebel sympathy, and by ceasing 
for ever, in our treatment of the fossil remains of the slave 
aristocracy, from that, which, for want of more elegant expressions, 
is designated by the terms " toadyism " and " flunkeyism," and 
which has for half a century been too common among us. 

We are not to overlook the vast aid, in this matter of the " re- 
construction of society," which will be given by that small band of 
devoted men who have' steadily adhered to the Union, nor by that 
multitude who have been iimoillinghj led or forced into the Re- 
bellion ; nor, again, by that large number of owners of slaves who> 
though of the slaveholding class, did not belong to the insolent, 
overbearing, and arrogant " slave aristocracy," and could not be 
included in that almost demoniacal class, commonly known by the 
name of " fire eaters." This " reconstruction " may require time ; 
but if wisdom, prudence, firmness, kindness, are combined in the 
execution of the work, we may well believe that, in less than half 
the time it has required to crush the Rebellion, the task will have 
been so far performed as to give us the perfect assurance of its 
entire accomplishment, within an additional period of no greater 
length. 

Some of the slave aristocracy will prefer exile to a state of things 
in which the poor white is to be restored to a state of manhood, 
and the slave to freedom ; and they will depart without regret or 
sympathy. Many years must elapse before the immense material 
injury inflicted on those States by the madness of the Rebellion can 
be repaired, and some time perhaps before the true mode of 
adapting the emancipated slave to his new condition will 
be discovered and applied ; but when all this is done, and we 
cannot doubt it will be at no distant period, those States will enter 
on a new career of prosperity and of honor, which, while it invigo- 
rates and elevates them as States, will immensely add to the strength, 
power, and durability of the Union. "We shall then be, in every 
sense, social as well as political, a united people. 

In treating of the " reconstruction of society," I repeat, for it 
cannot be too often repeated, that what has constituted " society " 
there has embraced numerically but an insignificant minority of 
the people ; that many of the members of the old slave aristocracy 
will never consent to live under the new system, and will volun- 
tarily expatriate themselves, leaving their places to be supplied by 



31 

others ; that these latter together with those of the old " society " 
who are willing to conform to the " new," will thereafter form the 
" society ;" that, instead of the frightful bugbear of depopulation, 
presented to us in such vivid colors of horror by the rebel aristoc- 
racy and their sympathizers, the result will at the worst be the 
departure of a, few, while the millions will be left, and the place of 
these few be supplied by men more worthy the privileges and the 
name of "American citizen." A careful estimate of the numbers cm- 
braced in all the classes, which have been mentioned in this paper, 
as being required by every dictate of justice and of true mercy to 
pay the penalty to a greater or less extent of their treason, will 
present but a few hundreds out of their five millions of white in- 
habitants. It is worse than idle then to predicate barbarity, 
cruelty, inhumanity, of the punishment those men may receive from 
a country whose life they deliberately and persistently sought to 
destroy, and hundreds of thousands of whose citizens have, by their 
act, been consigned to untimely graves. 



II. 

THE MODE OF RESTORATION" OP THE REBEL STATES TO 
THE UNION. 

It has already been remarked that, the term li reconstruction," 
as applied to the rebel States, though often used, is used very in- 
accurately, not to say injuriously. It implies ex vi termini, the 
previous destruction of that which is to be re-constructed. In the 
case before us it implies that those States, as States of tJoe Union, 
arc destroyed ; that they do not now exist as such ; consequently, 
that the ordinances of secession were valid ; and again conse- 
quently, that a State has the potoer to withdraw from the Union. 
It admits the power and the right of secession. 

This is an error as palpable as it is dangerous, and should not 
for a moment be sanctioned even by inference or implication. No. 
Those States, as States, have never for an hour in a constitutional 
and legal sense been out of the Union ; they have ever been and 
now are substantive and component parts of it as truly as Massa- 
chusetts or Ohio. Very much has been written on the subject of 



32 

the rigid of a State to secede from the Union, so much indeed, 
that the intellectual argument may well be said to be exhausted. 
It may with equal truth be said that further argument is wholly 
useless, inasmuch as the question is for ever settled, and a judgment 
alike solemn, unappealable and irresistible has been pronounced 
by the only sovereign power — the people. 

If the mighty war, through which we have just passed and in 
which we have so entirely and gloriously triumphed, has estab- 
lished any doctrine or principle whatever, it is " that no State has 
the right or power to, or by any possibility can, withdraw from 
the Union, except by an amendment to the Constitution permitting 
it." The fatal heresy on this subject prevailing so extensively in 
the rebel States was, as has been already mentioned, one of the 
instrumentalities by which the leading conspirators were enabled 
to inaugurate the Rebellion ; it was a dircfully active agent in 
this fratricidal work : to impress on it the seal of everlasting con- 
demnation and to sweep it, as an operative principle, for ever from 
existence, was one of the objects as it is one of the blessed results 
of the war. 

This judgment of condemnation, obtained by more than four 
years of deadly conflict and at such an amazing expenditure of 
life and of treasure, stands, and will ever stand, a proud monument 
of the intelligent understanding by the American people of the 
true nature of their Union, of their earnest devotion to it, and of 
their determination that it shall be perpetual. Never again can 
this wicked delusion have any practical influence or perceptible 
existence in this country or in any part of it ; it has lived its day, 
it has performed its unhallowed work of attempting the national 
death, and has in the attempt met its own • it now lies buried in a 
grave of infamy without the hope or possibility of resurrection. 
If, after all tills, any man in America is found still to cling to that 
delusion, and to write or to speak in its advocacy, his bitterest enemy 
could wish him no worse punishment than he will receive in the 
pity, the contempt and disgust that will await him on every 
side. 

In determining then the mode of restoration of those States the 
very starting point, the first step in the process, is the postulate, 
that, one and all, they have never ceased, since their admission 
into the Union, to be, and that they now arc members of it, States 



33 

within it* With this rule as the guide, and with a faithful ad- 
herence to it, all difficulties in the way of restoration vanish. 

It may be asked what is meant by " restoration," and what is 
the difference between that aud " reconstruction." The meaning 
of the latter has already been stated ; the necessity for the use 
of the former term arises from the fact that through the unconsti- 
tutional, illegal and void acts of citizens of those States, those 
States and the people thereof have for a period practically omit- 
ted to exercise their rights, enjoy their privileges and perform their 
duties in the Union ; though in the family, they have been refrac- 
tory, rebellious and disobedient members ; their rebellion being 
at an end and they desiring to be again in the enjoyment of their 
wonted rights and privileges, and in the performance of their du- 
ties as members of the family (from which they have been for a 
season separated in fact but not in law), the question is how 
that " restoration " is to be effected. This brief " statement of the 
case " explains clearly the meaning of the term " restoration," 
and shows the propriety of its use. 

1. A necessary consequence of the proposition above stated 
(viz., that no State has been, or is now, out of the Union) is, that 
all acts of any bodies of men in those States by whatever name 
called, conventions, legislatures, congress, designed or intended 
and performed for the purpose of withdrawing that State from the 

* How well is this truth stated in a letter from General Sherman dated at Sa- 
vannah, January 8, 1865, to a citizen of Georgia. He says: "Georgia is not out 
of the Union, and therefore the talk of ' reconstruction ' appears to me inap- 
propriate. Some of the people have been and still are in a state of revolt ; and as 
long as they remain armed and organized, the United States must pursue them 
with armies, and deal with them according to military law. But as soon as they 
break up their armed organizations and return to their homes, I take it they will 
be dealt with by the civil courts. Some of the rebels in Georgia, in my judgment^ 
deserve death, because they have committed murder, and other crimes, which are 
punished with death by all civilized governments on earth. You may rest assured 
that the Union will be preserved, cost what it may. And if you are sensible men 
you will conform to this order of things or else migrate to some other country. 
There is no other alternative open to the people of Georgia. 

" My opinion is that no negotiations are necessary, nor commissioners, nor con- 
ventions, nor any thing of the kind. Whenever the people of Georgia quit rebelling 
against their Government then the State of Georgia will have resumed her func- 
tions in the Union." It seems to me that it is time for the people of Georgia to act 
for themselves, and return, in time, to their duty to the Government of their 
fathers." 

3 



34 

Union, and all acts consequent on or produced by such attempted 
withdrawal or designed to aid in its practical carrying out, are 
each and every of them merely void : * so as to all similar acts of 
any pretended executive or judicial authority, the creature of the 
Rebellion. This proposition would seem self-evident ; the thing 

* This has been emphatically and solemnly declared in a recent Executive paper 
of President Johnson, in which he pronounces " that all acts and proceedings of 
the political, military and civil organizations which have been in a state of insur- 
rection and rebellion within the State of Virginia against the authority and laws 
of the United States, and of which. Jefferson Davis, John Letcher and William 
Smith were late the respective chiefs, are declared null and void. 

"All persons who shall exercise, claim, pretend or attempt to exercise any political, 
military or civil power, authority, jurisdiction or right, by, through or under Jef- 
ferson Davis, late of the city of Richmond, and his confidants, or under John 
Letcher or William Smith, and their confidants, or under any pretended political, 
military or civil commission or authority issued by them or of them, since the 17th, 
day of April, 1861, shall be deemed and taken as in rebellion against the United 
States, and shall be dealt with accoi'dingly. 

" The Secretaries of State, War, Treasury, Navy, and Interior, and Postmaster- 
General, are ordered to proceed to put in force all laws of the United States per- 
taining to their several departments, and the District Judge of said district to 
proceed to hold courts within said States, in accordance with the provisions of the 
acts of Congress. The Attorney-General will instruct the proper officers to libel and 
bring to judgment, confiscation and sale property subject to confiscation, and en- 
force the administration of justice within said State, in all matters civil and 
criminal within the cognizance of the Federal courts ; to carry into effect the 
guaranty of the Federal Constitution of a republican form of State Government, 
and afford the advantage and security of domestic laws, as well as to complete the 
re-establishment of the authority of the laws of the United States, and the full 
and complete restoration of peace within the limits aforesaid. Francis H. Pier- 
pont, Governor of the State of Virginia, will be aided by the Federal Government 
so far as may be necessary in the lawful measures which he may take for the ex- 
tension and administration of the State Government throughout the geographical 
limits of said State." 

The case is also very strongly and truly put by General Wilson in the follow- 
ing letter to the rebel Governor Brown : " Headquarters Cavalry Corps, M. D. M., 
Macon, Ga., May 9, 18G5, 2.30 p. m. Sir — In pursuance of instructions received 
this day from Hon. E. M. Stanton, Secretary of War, I have the honor to inform 
you that your telegram of the 7th inst., forwarded by my sanction, has been laid 
before the President of the United States, and the following are his reply and 
orders : 

" 1. That the collapse in the currency and the great destitution of provisions 
among the people of Georgia, mentioned in your telegram, have been caused by 
treason, insurrection and rebellion against the laws of the United States, incited 
and carried on for the last four years by you and your confederate rebels and 
traitors, who alone are responsible for all the waste, destitution and want now 
existing in that State. 

" 2. What you call ' the result which the fortunes of war have imposed upon the 



35 

created must derive its vitality and power from its creator ; and 
where the latter is wholly and absolutely baseless, is without a 
particle of the spirit of life, and whose death in a constitutional 
and legal sense was precisely contemporaneous with its very ap- 
pearance, in such a case, the attempted or pretended creations 
from such an origin all partake of its character ; all fall with it ; 
all are equally inoperative, void and dead ab origine. Here the 
parent, the source of every thing subsequent, was the ordinance of 
secession ; on this was based the new State, the new constitution, 
congress, legislatures, every thing ; not a moment of real vital ex- 



people of Georgia,' and all the loss and woe they have suffered, are charged upon 
you and your confederate rebels, who have usurped the authority of the State and 
assumed to act as its Governor and Legislature, made acts treasonable to the 
United States, and by means of that usurped authority provoked the war to 
extremity, until compelled by superior force to lay down their arms and accept the 
result which ' the fortunes of war ' have imposed upon the people of Georgia, as 
the just penalty of the crimes of treason and rebellion. 

'* That the restoration of peace and order cannot be intrusted to rebels and trai- 
tors who destroyed the peace and trampled down the order that had existed more 
than half a century in Georgia, a great and prosperous State. The persons who 
incited the war and carried it on at so great a sacrifice to the people of Georgia, 
and of all the United States, will not be allowed to assemble, at the call of their 
accomplice, to act again as a Legislature of the State, and again usurp its authori- 
ties and franchises. Men whose crimes spilled so much blood of their fellow- 
citizens, and pressed so much woe upon the people, destroyed the finances, cur- 
rency and credit of the State, and reduced the poor to destitution, will not be 
allowed to usurp legislative power that might be intended to set on foot fresh acts 
of treason and rebellion. In calling them together without permission of the 
President, you have perpetrated a fresh crime, that will be dealt with accordingly. 
I am further directed to inform you, that the President of the United States will, 
without delay, exert all the lawful powers of his office to relieve the people of 
Georgia from destitution, by delivering them from the bondage of military tyranny 
which avowed rebels and traitors have long imposed alike upon poor and rich. 

" The President hopes that by restoring peace and order, giving security to life, 
liberty and property, by encouraging trade, arts, manufactures, and every species 
of industry, to recover the financial credit of the State, and develop its great 
resources, the people will again soon be able to rejoice under the Constitution and 
laws of the United States, and of their own State, in the prosperity and happiness 
they once had. To all good people who return to their allegiance, liberality will 
be exercised. 

" If any person shall presume to answer or acknowledge the call mentioned in 
your telegram to the President, I am directed to cause his immediate arrest and 
imprisonment, and hold him subject to the orders of the War Department. 

" I am, sir, very respectfully, your obedient servant, 
" Joseph E. Brow.v, Milledgeville, Ga. J . H. Wilson, Brevet Major-General." 



36 



istence have any of them had, because the ordinance was wholly 
and absolutely null and void for the reasons already stated. 

It is of the last importance to adhere throughout to the propo- 
sition, that no rebel State has been, or is now, out of the Union, 
and to accept the legitimate practical results of that proposition, 
whatever they may be. Nor need any apprehension be entertained 
as to those practical results, if the views above stated, as to the 
" reconstruction of society," and the " treatment of the rebels in- 
dividually," are adopted and truly carried out. Let this be done, 
(and, as has already been shown, it can be done) and not many 
months, surely not a long period will elapse before that region 
will be cleared of the leading spirits of the Rebellion by their 
punishment or flight, or if they remain, by their quiet and grateful 
submission to the Constitution and laws of their country ; within 
a period not longer, the prejudices, asperities and delusions of 
others will disappear before the resistless light of Truth, and the 
great bulk of the people will embrace with earnest joy the bless- 
ings of the mild and paternal Government of their country in ex- 
change for the horrors of tyranny, despotism and war, which they 
have so bitterly experienced during the last four years. Then, 
whether under existing or new State constitutions and laws, that 
people will become, more emphatically than they have ever yet 
been, worthy citizens of the Republic and safe depositories of the 
power reposed in them by the fundamental principles of this Gov- 
ernment. 

But not till then will there be peace, quiet, real and true rec- 
onciliation and harmony, whatever course may be adopted by the 
executive or legislative authorities of the Union. 

It may be asked what is to be the condition of those States 
and the inhabitants thereof till this state of things is reached. The 
answer is, that they must, ex necessitate rei, remain in their present 
anomalous condition — but it is to be remembered that the duration 
of this condition longer or shorter depends entirely on themselves. 
They can be relieved from it, if they so elect, immediately.* The 

* The following order for the military re-districting of the State of Virginia 
shows the modus operandi during this interval : " First. — The sub-district of the 
Roanoke, Blackwater and Appomattox, as hereinafter designated, will constitute 
the District of the Nottaway, under command of Major-General George L. Hartsuff, 
headquarters at Petersburg. Second. — The counties of Accomac, Northampton, For- 



37 

constitution and laws of oacli rebel State, as tney pre-existed the 
ordinance of secession, are at this moment the constitution and 
laws of that State. This may to some seem a startling, nay, 
an inadmissible proposition ; but when examined it will be found 
strictly true and practically safe and beneficent. It must con- 
stantly be borne in mind, that those State constitutions and laws 
are by the very fundamental principles of our Union subordinate 
to the Constitution of the United States and to all legislative and 
Executive acts conformable to the Constitution. The Constitution 

tress Monroe and the sub-district of the Peninsula, as hereinafter designated, will 
constitute the District of Fortress Monroe, under command of Brevet Major-General 
Nelson A. Miles, headquarters at Fortress Monroe. Third. — The counties of Prin- 
cess Anne, Norfolk, Nansemond, Southampton and Isle of Wight, will constitute 
the District of Eastern Virginia, under command ofBrigadier-Genei-al G. H. Gordon, 
headquarters at Norfolk. Fourth. — The counties of Nelson, Amherst, Bedford, 
Campbell, Appomattox, Pittsylvania, Henry, Patrick and Franklin will consti- 
tute the District of Lynchburg, under command of Brevet Brigadier-General J. 
Irwin Gregg. Fifth. — The county of Henrico will constitute a District, under 
command of Brigadier General M. R. Patrick. Sixth. — The counties of Mathews, 
Gloucester, New Kent, King William, Charles City, York, Warwick, and Elizabeth 
City, excepting Fortress Monroe, will constitute the Sub-district of the Peninsula, 
under command of Brevet Brigadier-General B. C. Ludlow. Seventh. — The counties 
of Middlesex, King and Queen, Essex, Caroline, Spottsylvania and Orange, will 
constitute the Sub-district of the Rappahannock, under command of Colonel E. V. 
Sumner, First New York Mounted Rifles. Eighth. — The counties of Hanover, 
Louisa, Goochland, Fluvanna, Albemarle and Greene, will constitute the Sub-dis- 
trict of the South Anna, under command of Brevet Brigadier-General A. C. Yorris. 
Ninth. — The counties of Surrey, Sussex, Greenville, Brunswick, Dinwiddie and 
Prince George, will constitute the Sub-district of the Blackwater, under command 
of Brevet Brigadier-General McKibbin. Tenth. — The counties of Mccklenbur^, 
Lunenburg, Nottoway, Prince Edward, Charlotte and Halifax, will constitute the 
Sub-district of the Roanoke, under command of Brevet Major-General Ferrero. 
Eleventh. — The counties of Chesterfield, Amelia, Powhatan, Cumberland and Buck- 
ingham, will constitute the Sub-district of the Appomattox, under command of 
Brevet Brigadier-General C. W. Smith. Commanders of districts and such of the 
sub-districts as are not included in any of the districts above described, will report 
direct to these headquarters, and will constitute separate brigades for the purpose of 
enabling the commanding officers to convene general courts-martial. The com- 
manders of districts and sub-districts are made superintendents of Negro affairs 
within their respective limits." To the same import is the following extract from 
the New Orleans Delta, of May 25, 1865 : " General Sheridan has assumed command 
of the Military Division of the Southwest, embracing the country west of the 
Mississippi and south of the Arkansas Rivers. General Canby has divided the 
Department of the Gulf into the following four divisions — Louisiana, headquarters 
New Orleans ; Mississippi, headquarters Jackson ; Alabama, headquarters Mont- 
gomery ; Florida, headquarters Tallahassee. The citizens of Louisiana appear 
much gratified by the programme of the new military authorities." 



38 

and those constitutional acts are the " supreme law of the laud." 
Consequently, taking for example the State of South Carolina, at 
this very moment she is in a state of Union, with her constitution 
and laws as they existed on the 20th of December, 1860, with 
such modifications, changes, and variations as are created by any 
acts of the Executive or legislative power of the United States 
conformable to the Constitution of the United States and now in 
force. Thus, the provisions of the constitution, laws and customs 
of South Carolina as to slavery are wholly done away by the Eman- 
cipation Proclamations of September, 1862, and January, 1S63, if 
those proclamations were a constitutional exercise of power by 
the President ; in which case not a slave now exists in that State. 
It is not proposed here to discuss the constitutional and legal 
validity of those magnificent State papers, nor whether they pro- 
duced the effect desired and intended by the President. It is 
well known that he considered them clearly within his constitu- 
tional power, and that in his view they instantaneously struck 
the shackles from every slave in the rebel States.* Those proc- 
lamations are mentioned simply by way of illustration ; the 
Confiscation Acts of Congress might be referred to for the same 
purpose, but it is deemed unnecessary at this time. 

It is sufficient to say that, if those Executive and legislative acts 
are authorized by the Constitution, they are at this moment the 
law in South Carolina. In our wonderful and beautiful though 
complicated system, not fully understood even among ourselves, 
and quite unintelligible to most foreigners, it is as vitally im- 
portant to the people to preserve unimpaired legitimate State rights 
as it is to protect and preserve inviolate the rights and powers of 
the national Government. Occasionally a foreigner has perfectly 

* The question of the effect of these proclamations is at this moment of great 
practical importance, and will continue to be so till the Constitutional Amendment 
as to slavery is adopted by twenty-seven States. That this most desirable event 
will occur in the course of the next year can hardly be doubted ; but as it may be 
longer delayed, it is not deemed out of place to add to this paper, by way of ap- 
pendix, the writer's argument in favor of the constitutional validity of the proc- 
lamation of September, 18G2. An additional reason for doing so is that that argument 
received the cordial approbation of President Lincoln, and as every thing from his 
pen since his martyrdom is an object of interest to his fellow citizens, a copy of an 
autograph letter received from him is also given. That argument is reprinted 
verbatim as read by President Lincoln, in order that it may be seen exactly of what 
he spoke. 



39 

clear and just conceptions on this subject, and when he adds to 
that accurate knowledge of our political system an enthusiastic 
admiration and a heartfelt love of our institutions, his views are 
entitled to the highest respect and consideration, and indeed should 
have the weight of authority. Of this class is the eminent and 
excellent Du Gasparin. His words at this juncture cannot be too 
deeply pondered, nor his warnings too carefully listened to by the 
American citizen. In his great work, " America before Europe, "* 
he says : " The independence of the States must be protected with 
jealous care." " I counsel no measure that would not be strictly 
constitutional. I should have grossly contradicted myself if 
after having advised Americans to preserve their institutions and 
retain them at the end of the war as they were at its beginning, 
I had urged them to violate them in their fundamental principle. 
The liberty of the States is no less important to be maintained 
than the sovereignty of the nation. A rebellion by the South 
against the Constitution should not be combated by a similar 
rebellion by the North. The two original features of the Ameri- 
can organization should neither perish in the furnace of civil war. 
It will be glorious to see the United States come out of it with 
their local independence and their national unity alike un- 
impaired." 

Whatever momentary inconveniences may be suffered from a 
rigid adherence to the fundamental doctrines (1.) that " no State 
can secede from the Union, except by an amendment of the Con- 
stitution," (2.) that the rights of the States as States must be 
preserved inviolate ; whatever those inconveniences may be, a just 
regard to the preservation of the Union and of the Constitution 
requires, that those doctrines be steadily kept in view, and on 
no pretence, in any degree, or in any manner, departed from. The 
present condition of the rebel States is simply this : The people 
of those States were in rebellion against the Government, and 
sought to destroy the Union by the overthrow of the Constitu- 
tion ; while in this condition, the performance of their duties and 
the fulfillment of their obligations as members of the Union, were 
by their own act prevented, and in a constitutional sense, their 
State functions in that regard (that is as members of the Union) 

* " America before Europe," pp. 362, 367, 368. His other work, " The Upris- 
ing of a Great People," contains similar warnings. 



40 

were in a condition of suspension. The Rebellion is now ended 
in the only mode in which it could be ended, namely, by the 
total destruction of its military power ; and those States never 
having been in a constitutional and legal sense out of the Union, 
but their duties, obligations and privileges having been merely in 
a condition of practical suspense for a season, and that suspension 
being now terminated, they ipso facto, return to the fulfillment of 
those duties and obligations, and to the enjoyment of those privi- 
leges. Without inaccuracy of language and without the danger 
of the implication of erroneous ideas, " restoration " to the Union, 
in a practical sense, may well be predicated of their present 
condition. The results which follow from this view of the matter 
are simple, safe and intelligible. 

Bear constantly in mind the fact, that the Constitution of the 
United States, and all constitutional acts of Congress and of the 
Executive now in force, are the supreme law in each of those 
States — and the further essential and indisputable fact, that there 
is now, and there need never cease to be, in each of those States 
abundant national military power to insure implicit obedience to 
that Constitution and those acts.* And where then is the diffi- 
culty in tin's mode of " restoration ?" All the civil officers of the 
nation can safely perform their functions ; her judicial tribunals 
can exercise their powers and carry into execution their decrees ; 
taxes, external and internal, can be assessed and collected, and 
every national duty enforced. It has been demonstrated in a 
former part of this paper, that the requisite military power abun- 
dantly exists. Is it said that any State (byway of example again, 
South Carolina) will not perform its duty to itself by resuming 
its internal State functions, either under its existing or under a 
new constitution ; will not elect a governor or legislature, nor 
appoint judicial and other civil officers, nor send members to 
either branch of the national Congress ? This, should it be the 

* General Thomas, in a letter of the 22d of May, 1S65, to the Legislature of 
Tennessee, has well stated what will be clone by him and by our Generals in every 
rebel State. lie says : " I am prepared to assist the civil authorities in every 
part of the State, botli by securing- the officers from personal violence when in the 
execution of their office, in holding courts, etc., and assisting them to capture and 
bring to trial all persons who offer armed hostility to the State or national 
Government, and will so assist the civil authorities of the State as long as the 
national Government affords me the means of doing so." 



41 

fact, would lie a truly anarchial state of things ; and at least, 
would indicate on the part of the people of that State, an utter 
disregard of all that the people of other States deem essential to 
their comfort, safety and well being. Yet of what imaginable 
consequence would it be to the United States, so long as that 
State (South Carolina) pays its taxes to the General Government, 
interferes in no manner with the collection of the national duties 
on imports at its seaports, and offers no obstruction to the due 
and regular execution of the national laws through the national 
judicial tribunals ; in other words, so long as the Constitution 
and laws of the United States are fully operative ? It has already 
been shown that the nation has now, and never will cease to 
have, the full "and effective means of enforcing obedience to the 
national Constitution and laws in any State that has been in 
rebellion ; and if obedience is not rendered voluntarily it can 
and will be compelled. Again, if that State refuses or neglects 
to appoint Senators or elect Representatives to the national Con- 
gress, no harm is done to the nation; the State absurdly and 
injuriously to itself throws away its privileges, but in so doing it in- 
flicts no wound, not the slightest, on the nation ; the national Senate 
and House are convened and organized as usual, and pass laws ope- 
rative and binding alike on the people of every State, that State 
which chooses to bo unrepresented and that which has its full 
delegation in each House. Suppose that the State of New York, 
or of Illinois, in a fit of senseless passion, neglected or refused to 
be represented in Congress, the wheels of the national Govern- 
ment would not thereby be arrested or even clos-o-ed for a moment 
in their workings ; those States would render a voluntary or a 
compulsory obedience to the laws of the nation, and the loss by 
their wayward conduct would be to them as States and not to the 
nation. The remarks, applied to South Carolina by way of illus- 
tration, of course, equally apply to every State that has been in 
rebellion ; and it is thus seen that all that concerns the United 
States, the nation, is, that obedience be rendered to her Constitution 
and laws, and that if any State chooses to be in a domestic point 
of view, in a condition of anarchy, and sees fit to deprive itself of 
its rightful power and influence in the national councils, the detri- 
ment under our wise and beautifully devised system is confined to 
that State, is local and territorial, and in no degree, not even the 



42 

least, extends to the nation, or in any manner affects its power or 
prosperity, or retards its resistless onward-progress. But will 
South Carolina, will any State thus stultify itself? Will she 
deprive herself of the countless blessings of a well-ordered State 
Government ; introduce domestic anarchy and discord ; cast away 
her right of representation in the Legislature of the country ? 
Why should she ? No motive can be imagined for a course so 
suicidal and of such unmixed absurdity and folly ; and it may 
well be believed that the world will never be called on to witness 
a spectacle so miserable and so revolting. 

It is manifest from # the foregoing consideration that the great 
duty of the Government of the Union under existing circumstances 
is, first : To adopt sure and unfailing measures to obtain obedi- 
ence in every State and in every section of every State to the 
national Constitution and laws ; to permit no violations of duty 
and no departures from loyalty to the Union by any man or any 
set of men ; to tolerate nowhere any thing calculated or intended 
to preserve or foster the infernal spirit that led to the Rebellion 
— but on the contrary to adopt and pursue practically all such 
measures as will extirpate that spirit for ever. As has already been 
suggested, to accomplish these necessary and indispensable ends 
military force may, for a season (longer or shorter, according to 
the will of that people), be absolutely requisite ; and, as has also 
been stated, this great nation has now, and always can have that 
force to the utmost required extent. 

A second and an equally solemn and imperative duty of the 
national Government, is to preserve inviolate the rights guaran- 
teed to the States by the national Constitution. Among those 
rights, confessedly are : (1.) The right to have such constitu- 
tion and such laws for their interior and domestic government as 
they see fit, subject only to the condition that the " form of gov- 
ernment " shall, in the lano-uac-e of the national Constitution be 
" republican." 

(2.) The right to prescribe the qualifications of electors, that is, 
who shall and who shall not possess the elective franchise. It is 
very clear that without an amendment of the national Constitu- 
tion, the national Government cannot interfere in this matter. 
But practically speaking, that Government has, under the Consti- 
tution, the full power to protect itself against any improper or 



43 

injurious exercise of that power by the people of a State, for, first, 
each House is " the judge " of the qualifications of its own mem- 
bers, and thus can refuse admission to all deemed unsuitable or 
unworthy ; and second, -each House has the power of expulsion of 
members. Thus, if the Legislature or the electoral body in any 
State were so composed as to send to the Senate or the House of 
Representatives a man dangerous to the Union, he could be refused 
a seat or could be deprived of it, if admitted. This is a perfect 
practical safeguard so far as the nation is concerned. 

It is very clear from the foregoing considerations, that there is 
no lawful or constitutional mode in which the question of " negro 
suffrage " can be controlled or decided by the national Govern- 
ment ; the sooner this fact is understood and appreciated, and 
acted on by all, the sooner will there be a real and effective 
pacification and harmony throughout the land. Some regard the 
extension of the elective franchise to the black equally with the 
white as vitally essential to the peace and well-being of the 
country. If this view is conceded to be correct, it is hoped that 
none entertaining it would desire to attain their ends at the cost 
of a violation of the Constitution. But if there are such, they 
form but an inconsiderable class of impracticable enthusiasts. 
The people resolve, and will take care, that the Constitution, the 
ark of our safety, be preserved wholly and absolutely from dese- 
cration. How then is this extension of suffrage, if admitted to 
be of the very highest importance, to be obtained ? There are 
but two modes. First : An amendment of the Constitution in the 
mode prescribed by itself. Second : A steady perseverance in 
the work of the " reconstruction of society " in those States, and 
the consequent extinction there of the " spirit of the Rebellion," 
and the substitution in its place of the views, feelings and dispo- 
sitions suited to the " new " state of things. 

That this latter result, required as it is by the plainest and 
most persuasive considerations, can and will be effected has, it is 
believed, already been shown in this paper ; and when effected, 
it is certain that this subject (of Negro suffrage) will receive the 
most mature and enlightened consideration, and will be disposed 
of in such manner as philanthropy, humanity and the best interests 
of civilization and of the country require. It is not a " whisper 
of fancy " nor a " phantom of hope " to believe and to assert, that 



44 

at an early period we shall witness such a " reconstruction of 
society " in the rebel States as is portrayed in the preceding 
pages ; and, as is beyond doubt, indispensable to the present har- 
mony and the future safety of the Republic. Let all who look 
with timid apprehension or gloomy foreboding at the present 
state and the immediate future of Southern society remember 
these facts. 

(1.) That the military force of the nation is, and will continue 
to be, fully adequate in every portion of every rebel State to 
preserve perfect peace and order ; to suppress all exhibitions, by 
word or deed, of disloyalty to the country ; to insure entire safety 
to the judicial tribunals of the Union in the performance of their 
functions, and to secure perfect respect and implicit obedience to 
their judgments ; to enable all civil, ministerial and other officers 
of the Government to execute their duties, such as assessors and 
collectors of internal taxes, census enumerators, commissioners of 
confiscated estates, marshals, officers of the customs. 

(2.) That there is and always has been a " leaven" of loyalty in 
every rebel State, which, though not sufficient to " leaven the whole 
lump," will materially aid now in all works requisite for social 
" reconstruction" and political " restoration." 

(3 .) The horrors of the last four years of war and of a despot- 
ism tyrannical and severe beyond precedent, render the great bulk 
of the people of that region not only willing but anxious to enjoy 
once more the blessings of peace, security and liberty. 

(4.) The most obtuse and the most prejudiced rebel mind can- 
not fail to see in the facts of these four years the most overwhelm- 
ing evidence of his gross delusion in every important particular 
as to the character of his brethren of the North. 

(5.) Self-interest, that great motor in human action, most pal- 
pably and most imperiously demands of those people a full and 
honest acquiescence in the " new" state of things ; it demands of 
them a course of conduct whicli will at the earliest moment re- 
move from among them the last remaining soldier of the Republic, 
and will place them as their fellow-citizens of the North arc placed, 
in the perfect fruition of all the privileges of this, " the best Gov- 
ernment in the world." 



45 

(6.) Let us all duly estimate the transcendent influence of 2. free 
press and si free speech, with which that portion of the Republic 
is now, for the first time in its history, to be blessed, and by which 
it is to be instructed, elevated and refined. 

(7 J Consider, too, the genuine brotherly feeling toward the 
people of the rebel States which pervades the universal North ; 
no one among us is actuated by a spirit of revenge : no one calls 
for indiscriminate punishment, all desire and demand amnesty, 
except in a comparatively small number of cases, where the stern 
demands of justice and a due regard to the future safety of the 
Union require exemplary punishment and the necessity of which 
will be conceded alike by those people themselves, by us and by 
the civilized world. Who can estimate the kindly and emphatic 
influence on the people of the South of this generous, forgiving, 
fraternal feeling so universal at the North ! 

(8.) Commercial and business relations in all their diversified 
ramifications are fast being resumed between the two sections. 
What a bond of unity and concord is this ! and how powerfully 
will it contribute not to " restore" matters to their old condition, 
but to create an infinitely better and happier personal and social 
intercourse between them and us. 

(9.) Beyond question, the rebel States will hereafter be freed 
from the noxious presence of many a " slave aristocrat," many " a 
fire-eater," many a disturber of the harmony of the country : this 
will, indeed, be a great boon, and few, very few will be found to 
shed a single tear over the voluntary or involuntary expatriation 
of such persons ; scarcely any " so poor as to do them reverence." 

(10.) The large addition that will almost immediately be made 
to the population of each of those States by citizens from the non- 
slaveholding States and by emigrants from the various countries 
of Europe, will subserve a highly useful purpose in the great mat- 
ter of the " reconstruction of society," and the consequent prepara- 
tion of the citizens of those States to perform well their duties 
as citizens of a Republic, in which a political and social aristocracy, 
founded on Negro slavery, will no more be known for ever. 

To a community thus regenerated, all questions affecting the 
public weal, the rights of the citizen, whether black or white, and 
especially the great right of suffrage, may safely be committed. 



46 

Let it not be said that this regeneration may be long deferred or 
may never occur, for while it is believed certain that neither of 
these assertions will be verified by results, there can be no mistake 
in saying that patriotism and an enlightened love of the Union 
plainly declare, that the falsification even of those predictions 
would be attained at too costly a price by any, even the smallest, 
violation of the Constitution. 



APPENDIX. 



gttjtitftitf Putin's gcttcv. 



Executive Mansion, Washington, Dec. 7, 1862. 
Charles P. Kirkland, Esq., Neio York: 

I have just received, and hastily read, your published letter 
to the Hon. Benjamin R. Curtis ; under the circumstances, I 
may not bo the most competent judge, but it appears to me to 
be a paper of great ability, and for the country's sake, more 
than my own, I thank you for it. 

Yours, very truly, 

A. LINCOLN. 



to the honoeable benjamin e. curtis, late associate 
Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. 

I propose respectfully, but with perfect frankness, to review 
your recently published pamphlet on the subject of the President's 
"Emancipation Proclamation" of September 22d, 1862. 

This would have been done at an earlier day, but it is only very 
recently that I first saw the pamphlet. 

It is to be regretted that, regarding — as you profess to do — 
this proclamation and that of the 24th of the same month, 
as fraught with peril to your countrymen, you did not treat them 
separately. They differ radically and essentially in subject and in 
intent. The one is limited in its application to the rebel States, 
the other applies equally there and here. The one involves ulti- 
mate results and consequences of the most important and enduring 
character; the other is, in its very nature, temporary. The one 
gives rise to considerations of a kind wholly different from, and 
irrelevant to, the other ; yet your pamphlet so confuses them to- 
gether, that it is quite difficult, if not impossible, to discover what, 
in your view, is the distinguishing fatal error of each. Justice to 
the subject, which you declare to be of such momentous import ; 
justice to the Head of this great nation, whose acts you arraign as 
bordering on, if not actually amounting to, the crime of usurpa- 
tion; justice to the elevated position you so recently occupied, 
required that you should at least have pointed out separately, 
distinctly, and in the most lucid manner, the grounds on which 
you base a charge of such magnitude. Instead of that, we have 
here (to use a legal term with which you are familiar) a complete 
"hotch-potch." These different and distinct matters are thrown 
indiscriminately together ; and, in many instances, no ingenuity 
can determine whether your argument, your illustrations, your 
deprecatory expressions, apply to the one proclamation or to the 
other. But at present I shall, so far as I can, ascertain from your 
pamphlet the specific complaints you make as to the " emancipa- 
tion proclamation," and, if I err in attributing to you allegations 



as to this, which you intended solely for the other, my error will, 
I trust, find an apology in the mode you have adopted of treating 
the two subjects. 

Before going further, I may be pardoned for imitating your 
example, and saying a word personal to mj-self. In some essential 
particulars, I stand in the same position you state yourself to 
occupy. I, like you, "am a member of no political party." "I 
withdrew," as you did, "some years ago, from all such connec- 
tions." I have generally, however, exercised my privilege -as one 
of the electoral body ; and at the last presidential election I voted 
against the present incumbent, and at the last State senatorial elec- 
tion I voted for the Democratic candidate in my district. 

I, like you, " have no occasion to listen to the exhortations now 
so frequent to divest myself of party ties, and act for my country." 
I, too, "have nothing but my country for which to act in public 
affairs," and with me, too, " it is solely because I have that yet 
remaining, and know not but it may be possible to say something 
to my countrymen, which may aid them to form right conclusions 
in these dark and dangerous times, that I now (through you) 
address them," and make the effort to aid them in "forming 
right conclusions" as to your views, and the subject of which 
you treat. Thus, my work, like yours, is purely "a work of 
love." 

It may not be amiss to say, that there are, in fact, but two parties 
in our country ; one that is for the country, the other that is against 
the country. To the former belong the vast majority of the Demo- 
cratic party and the vast majority of the Republican party, and the 
few (alas ! so few) Unionists of the South ; to the latter belong the 
fanatical abolitionists in the Republican party, 'the rebel sympa- 
thizers in the Democratic party and the Rebels of the South. To 
the party of my country belong, I say, the great majority of both 
the Democratic and the Republican parties ; in other words, the 
vast majority of the "People" of the United States — I say so, 
because I cannot be persuaded that that majority, by whatever 
party name the individuals composing it may be called, are insen- 
sible to the blessings of the form of government under which they 
live, unaware and ignorant of the indispensable importance of the 
preservation of the Union to their existence as a nation — forgetful, 
basely, ungratefully forgetful, of the heroic struggles and sacrifices 



of their Revolutionary fathers — deaf and dead to the earnest pater- 
nal farewell advice and warnings of Washington, lost to all sense 
of patriotism and of public virtue. And as to the millions from 
other lands, who are now u of us and with us," who have sought 
and found shelter and protection and happiness in our Temple of 
Liberty, and who with such gallantry have recently fought the 
battles of "The United States of America," and who individually 
belong to the Democratic or the Republican parties, I cannot be- 
lieve that these men, whether as individuals they may be called 
Democrats or Republicans, will ever consent to the overthrow of 
that Temple, or to the breaking up of those " United States." But 
notwithstanding this perfect conviction of mine, it is nevertheless, 
as you say, not out of place for you or for me, or for any others 
who choose to undertake the task, to " say something that may aid 
our countrymen to form right conclusions in these dark and dan- 
gerous" (as you call them) "times." 

These words, " dark and dangerous," in the connection in which 
you use them, lead me to say another preliminary word before 
coming directly to your argument. 

These words assure me, that you belong to that class of men 
among us, not large in number, but sometimes influential in posi- 
tion, who, from natural temperament and disposition, or from 
aversion to strife of all kinds, or from a want of proper appreciation 
of the real character of this rebellion, (I think chiefly from the lat- 
ter cause,) honestly labor under a fearful distrust or a gloomy fore- 
boding as to the result of the impending contest for the preserva- 
tion of our glorious government and of our blessed Union. / do 
not belong to that class of men. I do not now believe, fear, nor 
apprehend, and never for a moment have believed, feared or 
apprehended that a crime, such as this rebellion, a crime against 
the Almighty and against humanity, wholly without a parallel for 
enormity in the world's history, and the iniquity of which can 
scarcely be expressed in any language known to us, I do not, I say, 
believe that such a crime will be permitted to be carried to a success- 
ful end, so long as " God sitteth on the throne judging the right," 
nor until Truth shall cease to prevail over error, reason to triumph 
over delusion, and Right to overcome wrong.* On the contrary, I 

* In speaking of the crime of this rebellion, the difference in a moral point of view- 
between the leading conspirators and the both/ of the people of the South engaged in it 



6 

look with a clear faith and a, cheerful confidence to the termination 
of this rebellion at no remote period, and to such a termination as 
will show to an admiring and approving world that this govern- 
ment, confessedly the most beneficent, is at the same time the most 
firm and enduring to be found on earth. 

To proceed to the examination of your argument : 

The first observation I have to make is, that throughout your 
paper you treat the proclamation substantially as if it were a pro- 
clamation of absolute emancipation in the rebel States ; that is, were 
it such a proclamation, your argument would be in substance the 
same it now is. 

Again, in your copy of it, you entirely omit the clause in refer- 
ence to compensation ; and it will be found that a portion, and no 
immaterial portion, of your argument, is based on the non-exist. 
ence of the conditional and compensatory parts of the proclamation. 
It is very clear, that a proper regard to truth and fairness would 
have required a conspicuous place in your paper for these two dis- 
tinguishing features. 

With these omitted or practically concealed, you could by no 
possibility attain the object you profess, namely, " the aiding your 
countrymen in forming rigid conclusions." 

A fatal error underlying your whole argument is, that in sub- 
stance and effect you treat and argue this matter precisely as you 
would have done had there been no rebellion and no war ; had the 
country been at peace; had you prepared and published your 
views in November, 1859, (if a similar proclamation had been then 
issued.) You throw the veil of oblivion over the last two years ; 
you ignore the events that have occurred during that period and 
the state of things existing in the country on the 22d of Septem- 
ber, 1862. 

Though you wholly disregard it in your argument, yet you 
forcibly describe the status of the country on the day of its date. 

should carefully be kept in view. The former are to be execrated, the latter to be 
pitied ; and while the practical effects of the wickedness of the one and of the delu- 
sions of the other, combined in action as they are, are the same, yet we are never to 
cease to draw the moral distinction just mentioned. Any one who desires to know 
the secret and real causes of the Rebellion, the motives and ends of the arch-conspirator3 
who originated it, will be gratified and instructed by a perusal of the article entitled 
"Slavery and Nobility vs. Democracy," ia the July number, 1862, of the Continental 
Monthly. 



You say, " The war in which we are engaged is a just and necessary 
war. It must be prosecuted with the tchole force of this govern- 
ment, till the military power of the South is broken and they 
submit themselves to their duty to obey and our right to have them 
obey the Constitution of the United States as the supreme law of 
the land." You thus affirm that, at the date of that proclamation, 
we were and now are engaged in a war, a just and necessary ivar — 
a war that must be carried to a success/id termination by the exercise 
of the whole force and power of the government. You might justly 
have added, that it is a war infinitely worse, on the part of the 
rebels who caused it, than a war with any foreign nation could be, 
in its inception ; in the mode of its conduct by the rebels ; in 
the motives of its originators, and the ends sought to be accom- 
plished by it. It was then by necessary consequence a war, in 
which all the means — and more than the means — we might legiti- 
mately resort to in a foreign war might and ought to be used and 
rendered available to the utmost practicable extent consistent with 
the rules of civilized warfare. 

What, then, if we were at war with a foreign nation immediately 
on our borders, and that nation had within its bosom millions of 
slaves ? Can any one, versed in the slightest degree in the prin- 
ciples of the law of nations and the laws of war, for a moment 
doubt our right to declare and proclaim freedom to those slaves, in 
case that nation did not discontinue that war within a prescribed 
period ? 

It may be asked what would be the utility, the practicalness of 
such a proclamation ? I answer in your own words, " I do not 
propose to discuss the question whether this proclamation can have 
any practical effect on the unhappy race to whom it refers, nor what 
its practical consequences would be on them and on the white popu- 
lation of the United States." You discuss and I discuss simply 
the constitutional right and power of the President, under existing 
facts, to issue that proclamation. 

"We, in this discussion, are to assume that, in the contingency 
stated in it, it will go into actual operation as intended. Then 
we are to inquire what the practical effect of its thus going into 
actual operation would be, not on the black nor the white race, 
but on the war the rebels have declared and are carrying on. It 
requires but a very limited knowledge of facts to answer this in- 



8 

quiiy. If any one fact is demonstrated with perfect clearness in 
this contest thus far, it is, that the slaves in the States in rebellion 
have furnished to those States means indispensable to them for car- 
rying on and sustaining the contest on their part* Without the 
agricultural and domestic labor of the slaves, tens of thousands of 
whites, who have been and now are in the rebel army, could not 
have been withdrawn from the cultivation of the ground, and the 
various other pursuits requisite to the supply, for that whole 
region, of the actual necessaries of life. Without the slaves, their 
numerous and extensive earthworks, fortifications, and the like, 
their immense transportation of military stores and munitions, a 
vast amount of labor in camps and on marches, (to say nothing of 
the actual service as soldiers, said in many instances to have 

* Thousands of illustrations of the truth of this statement might be given. Take 
this one: On the second day of November, 1862, Gov. Brown, of Georgia, "Com- 
mander-in-Chief," issued this edict : 

To the Planters of Georgia : 

Siuce my late appeal to some of you, I am informed by Brig.-Gen. Mercer, com- 
manding at Savannah, that but few hands have been tendered. When the impress- 
ments made by Gen. Mercer, some weeks since, were loudly complained of, it was 
generally said that, while the planters objected to the principle of impressments, they 
would promptly furnish all the labor needed, if an appeal were made to them. I am 
informed that Gen. Mercer now has ample authority to make impressments. If, then, 
a sufficient supply of labor is not tendered within ten days from this date, he will resort 
immediately to that means of procuring it with my full sanction, and I doubt not with 
the sanction of the General Assembly. 

After you have been repeatedly notified of the absolute necessity for more labor to 
complete the fortifications adjudged by the military authorities in command to be indis- 
pensable to the defence of the key to the State, will you delay action till you are com- 
pelled to contribute means for the protection, not only of all your slaves, but of your 
homes, your firesides and your altars ? 

I will not believe that there was a want of sincerity in your professions of liberality 
and patriotism when many of you threatened resistance to impressment upon principle, 
and not because you were unwilling to aid the cause with your means. 

I renew the call for negroes to complete the fortifications around Savannah, and trust 
that every planter in Georgia will respond by a prompt tender of one-fifth of all his 
working men. 

As stated in my former appeal, the General in command will accept the number 
actually needed. 

JOSEPH E. BROWN. 

The Governor, it will be seen, calls for " one-fifth of all the working (slaves) men." 
The slave population in Georgia, in 1860, exceeded 462,000; it is not an exaggerated 
estimate, that one in six of that population is a " working man ;" this one-sixth is more 
than 77,000, and one-fifth of that number is upwards of 15,000. The call is therefore 
for 15,000 "working men," and this too in a single State, and for a limited pur- 
pose. And yet we have not the right to try to render unavailable to the " enemy" 
this powerful force ! 



9 

been rendered by slaves,) could by no possibility'- have been ac- 
complished. , 

The intent and design of the proclamation, its actual effect, if it 
has its intended operation, is to forever deprive the " enemy" of 
this vital, absolutely essential, and, as I have just said, indispensable, 
means of carrying on the war. In reason, in common-sense, in na- 
tional law, in the law of civilized war, what objection can exist to 
our using our power to attain an end so just, so lawful, and I may 
say so beneficent and so humane, as thus depriving our " enemy" 
of his means of warfare ? I do not believe that you, on more 
mature reflection, will deny the truth of what I have just stated. 

But you say, " grant that we have this power and this right, 
they cannot be exercised by the President" and for the exercise of 
this power, he is charged by you with " usurpation." 

A few considerations will show the fallacy, the manifest un- 
soundness and error of your views and arguments on this point. I 
may, in the first place, remark that the very tide of your pamphlet, 
" Executive Power" is a " delusion and a snare." The case does 
not give rise to the investigation of the President's "executive 
power." The word " executive" manifestly and from the whole 
context of the Constitution, has reference to the civil power of the 
President, to his various civil duties as the head of the nation, in 
"seeing that the laws are executed" — to his duties in time of 
■peace, though of course the same " executive" duties still con- 
tinue in time of war ; but to them,' in that event, are superadded 
others, which, in no just or proper sense, can be termed " execu- 
tive," but which pertain to him in time of war as " Commander-in- 
Chief." These latter duties are provided for by the letter and by 
the spirit of other provisions of the Constitution, by the very na- 
ture and necessity of the case, by the first law of nature and of 
nations, the law of self-preservation. What is the meaning and in- 
tent of the constitutional direction to the President, "that he shall 
preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution ," unless in time of war, 
he can do so in his capacity of "Commander-in-Chief," unless in 
time of war he shall have the power to adopt and carry out as to the 
enemy such measures as the laws of war justify, and as he may 
deem necessary ? Is the Constitution designed to do away these 
laws, and render them inapplicable to our nation — in other words, 
is the Constitution a felo de se f It cannot be denied, that in time 



10 

of war, at least, the President, while in a civil sense the "exec- 
utive," is at the same time the military head of the nation — " the 
Command 3r-in-Chief" — and as such his "command" is necessarily 
coextensive with the country. 

I cannot, on this point, quote anything more true and more ap- 
posite than a paragraph of your own. "In time of war, without 
any special legislation, the (our) Commander-in-Chief is lawfully em- 
powered by the Constitution and laws of the United States to do ivhat- 
ever is necessary and is sanctioned by the laws of war to accomplish the 
lawful objects of his command." 

This is, undoubtedly, the constitutional law of the land, and 
being so, it of necessity upsets and overturns all your objections to 
the proclamation in question. The " lawful object" of the Presi- 
dent at this moment is to preserve the Constitution by putting an 
end to this rebellion. In order to do this, it is necessary to deprive 
the rebels of their means of sustaining the rebellion — one of the 
most effective and available of those means, as just shown, is their 
slaves ; the intent and object of the proclamation are to deprive 
them of those means. The so depriving them " is sanctioned by 
the laws of war," and, consequently, this act of the President is, 
within your own doctrine, perfectly legal and constitutional. 

The same argument which you make against presidential power 
was made in Cross v. Harrison, 16 Howard, 164, in the Supreme 
Court of the United States, in a case occurring during, and arising 
out of, our war with Mexico, in the judgment in which case you, 
as one of the Justices of that Court, concurred. In that case the 
President, without any specific provision in the Constitution — 
without any law of Congress preexisting or adopted for the occa- 
sion, created a civil government in California, established a war 
tariff, and (by his agents) collected duties. The Court held that 
these acts (to use their own language) " were rightful and con- 
stitutional, though Congress had passed no law on the subject ;" 
that " those acts of the President were the exercise of a belligerent 
right ; that they were according to the law of arms and right on 
the general principles of war and peace." Who will allege, that the 
acts of the President on that occasion were not, to say the least, as 
unauthorized by the Constitution and the law as his proclamation 
in the present case ? And yet you did not dissent from the judg- 
ment of the Court, yo i did not speak of those acts as acts of 



11 

" Executive" power, for the term would have been there, as it is 
here, wholly inapplicable ; you did not then charge the President 
with usurpation. The whole case there was, as it is here, a case 
arising out of belligerent rights and duties, out of a state of war ; 
and the President's acts were there, as here, not in contradiction to, 
and disparagement of, the Constitution, but consistent therewith on 
the great ground that the Constitution nowhere repeals, but, on the 
contrary, from the necessities of its own existence and preservation, 
recognizes the laivs of war in a state of war. Similar authorities in 
abundance might be cited, but it would be a work of supereroga- 
tion. 

It may not be amiss, however, to refer in this connection to the 
honored name of John Quincy Adams, on the very point now in 
question, namely, the constitutional right of the President to issue 
this proclamation. 

No citizen of this land will deny to Mr. Adams as perfect an 
acquaintance with the spirit and nature of our institutions, as 
minute a knowledge of the provisions, expressed and implied, of 
the Constitution, and as ardent a desire to preserve them in their 
purity, as were ever possessed by any man living or dead. He 
was distinguished, too, for the most delicate moral sense, the purest 
integrity, and the deepest conscientiousness. I think no man who 
has taken an official oath ever felt a more earnest and constant 
desire on no occasion to violate it. Now, Mr. Adams, while a 
member of the House of ^Representatives, in a debate in the House, 
on an important subject, in April, 1842, after stating that slavery 
was abolished in Columbia, first by the Spanish General Murillo, 
and secondly by the American General Bolivar, by virtue of a 
military command given at the head of the army, and that its aboli- 
tion continued to this day, declares that " in a state of actual war 
the laws of war take precedence over civil laws and municipal 
institutions. I lay this down as the law of nations. I say that the 
military authority takes for the time the place of all municipal -in- 
stitutions, slavery among the rest, and that under that state of 
things, so far from its being true that the States, where slavery 
exists, have the exclusive management of the subject, not only the 
President of the United States, but the (subordinate) commander 
of the army has the power to order the emancipation of the slaves." 
This is the " true saying" of a great constitutional lawyer, a pure 



12 

patriot, a conscientious man — indeed, I doubt whether any man in 
this country, whose position entitles his opinions to any considera- 
tion, will be found to concur in your views. They are not adopted 
— indeed, they are repudiated by the most prominent leader of the 
Democratic party. Thus, Mr. John Van Buren (in a speech before 
the Democratic Union Association of the city of New- York, on 
the 10th of November instant) said : " I never said anything in 
reference to that proclamation except that it was a matter of ques- 
tionable expediency. I have never deemed it unconstitutional. I 
have never even asserted that, as a war measure, it might not have 
been expedient." It would seem idle to add more in demonstration 
of the clear, unquestionable power of the President (I may say, of 
his solemn duty) "as commander-in-chief," in the exercise of a 
military power, " during a state of war," to issue the proclamation 
in question. 

The ground of objection you most prominently put forth is, 
indeed, extraordinary, and, without offence, I trust I may say mon- 
strous. It is no more nor less than this : " The persons who are 
the subjects of this proclamation are held to service by the laws of 
the States in which they reside, enacted by State authority." "This 
proclamation by an executive decree proposes to repeal and annul 
valid State laws, which regulate the domestic relations of their 
people," and this "as a punishment against the entire people of a 
State by reason of the criminal conduct of a governing majority of 
its people." Never was more error, gross, palpable, grievous, found 
in a single brief paragraph. Mark the existing state of things. 
These "States" are each and every of them in rebellion against 
their country and their Government; they are waging against 
it the most bloody and relentless war ; they totally condemn and 
repudiate the Constitution of their country ; they deny that it 
has any, the least, authority over them ; they are making almost 
superhuman efforts to overthrow and destroy it ; the people, as 
individuals, and the States in their corporate, municipal capacities, 
go hand in hand together in this awful work, and yet you claim 
for them the protection of that very Constitution ; you claim the in- 
violability of their State laws under that Constitution. You claim 
that those laws are " valid " and operative, and are to shield and 
protect, aid and assist them in their unhallowed attempt to destroy 
their country ! ! It is difficult to imagine under what hallucination 



13 

you were laboring when you gave utterance to those sentiments. 
The bare statement of the case must carry to every sane mind, 
North and South, the instant refutation of your propositions. The 
very rebels themselves, to whom you offer the protection of the 
"Constitution," would, with wrathful indignation, spurn the offer. 

You speak of the proclamation as a "threatened penalty" — 

as "a punishment to the entire people of a State by 

reason of the criminal conduct of a governing majority of the 
people." 

I have already shown, satisfactorily I trust, that the act of the 
President partakes in no sense of the character of a "penalty" or 
" a punishment," but is simply the exercise of his constitutional 
power, in a time of war, to devise and adopt and carry out against 
the enemy such measures as he may judge to be for the good of 
his country ; for the defeat of that enemy, and for the success- 
ful and speedy ending of " the war." You draw a distinction, 
unheard of, I imagine, till announced by you, a distinction be- 
tween the "people of a State," and the "governing majority" 
of that people ; a distinction, too, which is to operate, in a time of 
war, against the party with whom that " State " is at war ! ! I 
venture to say, that no writer on the law of nations, no judicial 
tribunal, no intelligent man, has up to this hour believed or stated 
that, in the case of foreign war above supposed, the " governing 
majority" was not to all legal and all practical purposes, "the 
State." Were the United States at war with any foreign power — 
a war sanctioned by the "governing majority," (as our war of 
1812,) but a war which you and others (a minority) wholly dis- 
approved ; and that foreign power adopted some war measure 
which would operate on " the entire people" of the United States, 
could you and your associates of the minority, on any principle 
of law, military or civil, of justice, of reason, or of merc3 r , claim 
exemption from the effects of that measure ? The case supposed 
is precisely the case as it now exists between the " United States 
of America" on the one hand, and the " Eebel States and people" 
on the other. 

Again, you state as a serious, if not conclusive objection to the 
proclamation, that "it is on the slaves of loyal persons or of 
those who from their tender years, or other disability, cannot be 
either disloyal or otherwise, that the proclamation is to operate.'' 



14 

Have your count^men at this hour, to learn for the first time 
that the u sun shines alike on the just and on the unjust," that 
storms and whirlwind overwhelm at the same time the righteous 
and the wicked, and that the calamities of war, from the very ne- 
cessity of the case, fall indiscriminately on the innocent and the 
guilty, the strong and the helpless, on those of mature and those 
of "tender years" ? But as to this last objection, itlacks one ma- 
terial quality, namely, foundation in fact. That part of the pro- 
clamation which you have so strangely, as observed above, omitted, 
provides for the case of the very persons for whom your sympa- 
thies are excited. It pledges to them compensation. I say 
" pledges," for it declares " that the Executive will m due time 
recommend that all persons who have remained loyal (of course 
including in its spirit those who from tender years, or otherwise, 
were incapable of being disloyal) shall be compensated for all losses 
by acts of the United States, including the loss of slaves" ISTo 
future Congress of the United States will be so lost to all sense 
of honor and obligation as not to pass," and no future President 
so degraded as not to approve, a bill redeeming this solemn and 
sacred "pledge" of the Head of the nation. 

Again, you advert in no part of your argument to the vital fact 
that this proclamation is not absolute and unconditional, but that it 
depends even for its existence practically on the acts and will of the 
rebels themselves. If they so elect, it is never to go into operation, 
and they have abundant time to make that election, namely, from 
the 22d of September, 1862, to the 1st of January, 1863. But 
your argument, in all its essential particulars, would have been just 
the same as you now address it to your fellow-citizens, if this pro- 
clamation had been absolute, had declared universal emancipation, 
to go into effect on the day of its date, and (as already remarked) 
had not provided compensation to the loyal, and had been issued 
in a time of profound peace. 

You profess, in your argument, simply to examine " the nature 
and extent, and the asserted source of the power by which it is 
claimed that the issuing of this proclamation was authorized ;" and 
it was " for the purpose of saying something to your countrymen 
to aid them in forming right conclusions" that you ' reluctantly 
addressed them." The policy, the expediency, the utility, the 
practical effects, per se, of the proclamation, you say, you do not 



15 

" propose to discuss," yet you intimate, that by means of this pro- 
clamation, if executed, "scenes of bloodshed and worse than 
bloodshed are to be passed through," and you express, in no un- 
equivocal manner, a doubt "as to the lawfulness, in any Christian 
or civilized land, of the use of such means (that is, this proclama- 
tion) to attain any end." You intimate, too, that "a servile war 
is to be invoked to help twenty millions of the white race to assert 
the rightful authority of the Constitution and laws of their coun- 
try." All these direful forebodings are put forth in half a dozen 
lines, certainly not to " aid your fellow-citizens in forming right 
conclusions," but through their sympathies and their fears to in- 
duce the concurrence of their reason in your views as to the power 
to do the act in question. These "givings out" of yours require 
a passing notice. 

In the first place, where is your authority for the allegations as 
to " scenes of bloodshed and a servile war ?" I am not an aboli- 
tionist, nor a believer in the social and political equality of the black 
and white races, (though I have an opinion on the subject of the 
effect of the institution of slavery on the white man and white 
woman, who have been nurtured under its influence, and on the 
question of the compatibility of the institution with a republican 
form of government.) I am even called by some a pro-slavery 
man. Yet I see no " scenes of bloodshed," no " servile war," in 
the event of the practical carrying out of this proclamation. This, 
however, is a mere matter of speculation and opinion, and while I 
freely concede your right to entertain your own, I claim my right 
to entertain mine. Our means of forming our opinions are the 
same ; we both have the same lights, and the result alone can show 
which of us is right. 

But, in the next place, assuming the consequences to be just such 
as you imagine, who is responsible for those consequences ? They 
cannot come, as you will admit, if the rebels return to their alle- 
giance ; if they cease their unhallowed efforts to overthrow their 
government ; if they become dutiful citizens. If they do not, it 
is not your fault nor mine, nor that of our fellow-citizens, nor of 
the President, nor of the government of the United States — it is 
solely, wholly, unquestionably their own. 

Again, you look with evident heartfelt horror at the events which 
you thus contemplate. Have you no horror, no tears of sympathy, 



16 

no " bowels of compassion," when you reflect on the multitudes, the 
thousands of valuable loyal lives lost, homes grief- stricken, parents 
rendered childless, and children rendered orphans ; the desolation 
and misery of whole neighborhoods, to say nothing of the enor- 
mous material destruction caused to citizens of the loyal States in 
this war — a war on our part, as you say, " so just and necessary," 
and on the part of the rebels so wicked, so wanton, so utterly 
causeless, and so wholly unjustifiable? Though no man of human- 
ity could look with other than deep distress on the "scenes of 
bloodshed," and the " servile war," you imagine, (should they be- 
come realities,) surely it cannot be believed, that the amount of 
distress and suffering, that would thus ensue, would equal — it 
surely cannot surpass — the distress and suffering that have al- 
ready been endured by the loyal citizens of this republic in con- 
sequence of this rebellion. 

You doubt the " lawfulness," in this Christian and civilized land, 
of the use of such means (as this proclamation) to attain any end. 
And has it come to this, that a distinguished citizen of the republic 
doubts whether a proclamation emancipating the slaves in those 
States which shall be in rebellion on the first of January next, 
may not be " used as the means" " to attain the end" (granting that 
it may thereby be attained) of ending this war of rebellion, and thus 
of saving our Constitution, our government, our Union, and of 
still preserving for ourselves and for coming generations, here and 
elsewhere, the only real Temple of civil and religious liberty in 
which men can worship on earth? You speak of " lawfulness" in 
this connection rather in a moral than in any other sense ; the right 
and power in a legal and constitutional sense, to issue this proclama- 
tion has already been demonstrated. 

In a document intended, " after study and reflection," " to aid 
the citizens of this republic to form a right conclusion" on matters 
of surpassing magnitude and solemnity — matters imperilling their 
very liberties, as you state — a religious, scrupulous regard to truth 
in every material respect, was of course, to be expected ; and de- 
parture from truth may consist as well in omission and suppression 
as in direct assertion. I have already mentioned that you have 
wholly omitted, in the statement of the proclamation, the compen- 
satory part, and that you omit to bring forward, except merely in- 
cidentally, another most material part of it, namely, its conditional 
alternative character. 



• 17 

Whether your statement as to the " social condition of nine 
millions of men," has reference to both white and black, or to the 
white only, it is difficult to determine from the context ; if it has 
reference to the white, you commit a very serious error ; for the 
whole white population of the rebel States, (to which alone the 
proclamation and your argument relate,) according to the last 
census, (I860,) does not exceed four and one half millions. 

In quoting the opinion of the lamented Judge Woodbury, you 
omit to state that it was a dissenting opinion, concurred in by 
no other Judge, founded essentially, if not solely, on the fact 
c^ur.? ^ by him, that at the time in question in that case, " a state 
of war " did not exist in Ehode Island, where the matter arose. In 
so grave a paper prepared, as you assert, so deliberately, put forth 
under an imperative and resistless impulse of patriotic apprehen- 
sion that the liberties of the country were in imminent peril, (not 
from the rebellion but from the acts of the President, designed to 
crush the rebellion,) in such a paper, I say, it would seem that we 
ought not to be terrified by "portentous clouds," "gigantic sha- 
dows," the phrase "usurpation of power," often repeated, the " loss 
of his head by Charles I.," " seven hundred years of struggles against 
arbitrary power," and many other similar appeals, by modes of ex- 
pression, to anything but that calm reason, which enables us to " form 
right conclusions in dark and dangerous times." Much less in such a 
grave document from such a source, should important stress be laid 
on the expression, of an unnamed and irresponsible editor of a news- 
paper, " that nobody pretends that this act is constitutional, and 
nobody cares whether it is or not." That this editor was at least a 
very inferior constitutional lawyer, is very clear, and that this text 
from his paper should have furnished a peg on which to hang an 
alarming commentary on the " lawlessness" of the times, is at least 
extraordinary, and that lawlessness, too, not the lawlessness of rebels 
nor of rebel sympathizers. 

You ask, in view of the President's proclamation : " Who can 
imagine what is to come out of this great and desperate struggle? 
The military power of eleven of these States being destroyed, what 
then? What is to be their condition? What is to be our con- 
dition ?" 

Your questions admit of a ready answer. The United States of 
America are to come out of the struggle, a great, a united, a power- 



18 

ful, a free people, purified by the fires of adversity, and taught by 
their tremendous calamities the lessons of moderation and humility. 
The people of the rebel States, who choose to remain in them, are to 
come out of the struggle as citizens of States forming a part, as 
heretofore, of the United States, and with them, and as parts of them, 
they are in future to enjoy the blessings of a well-regulated liberty, 
they having in the mean time been taught a lesson of infinitely 
greater severity than that by which their brethren of the loyal 
States have been instructed. Whatever they have necessarily and 
legitimately lost in material things, by reason of the war they have 
waged, is, of course, lost to them forever ; if their slave property is 
thus lost, it is lost, and that is all that can bo said as to that. Then 
"their condition" and " our condition" is to be in substance just 
what it was before the rebellion, and what it would have continued 
to be but for the rebellion, with this only difference, that they and 
we will have learned the priceless value of the Union, and for 
generations to come treason and rebellion will not raise their horrid 
heads. 

Perhaps you may call this the dream of an enthusiast. Rely on 
it, I speak only the words of " truth and soberness;" and if you 
are spared for a brief period, you will be rejoiced, I trust, to wit- 
ness their full realization. Rejoiced, I say, because from your pam- 
phlet, you would have your countrymen infer, and I am bound to 
presume, that nothing but your intense love of your and their 
country and your agitating apprehensions that the " principles of 
liberty" are grievously to suffer, (not from, the rebellion, but from the 
acts of the President,) has induced you to address them. 

You say the u cry of disloyalty" has been raised against any 
one who should question these executive acts. I know not whether 
that epithet has been applied to you ; if it has been, I am bound to 
believe that the imputation was without cause, and that you are a 
faithful, loyal citizen of the Republic. But the greatest and the 
best are liable to err, and I may be permitted to say, that, however 
honestly and sincerely you entertain the sentiments you express, 
you have selected an inopportune moment for their expression ; 
and that at this particular period of our country's history, your 
"studies and reflections," your time and your efforts, would, to 
say the least, have been more benignly and gracefully employed in 
presenting to your countrymen a lifelike picture of the real charac- 



19 

ter of this rebellion, and in impressing on them with stirring and 
glowing eloquence the momentous duty it devolved on them. 
You could, with perfect verity, have told them, that this war, 
inaugurated by the rebel States, was wholly and absolutely without 
cause : in proof of that assertion, you could have stated three facts, 
so undeniable that the hardiest rebel, not bereft of reason, would 
not dispute them. 

First — That on the 1st day of November, 1860, no people on 
the globe were in the more perfect enjoyment of civil and religious 
liberty, of social, personal, and domestic security ; of more entire 
protection in the possession and use of all their property, of every 
kind ; and of more material prosperity, than the people of the 
eleven rebel States. 

Second. — That for all these blessings, as great as were ever vouch- 
safed by God to man, those people were indebted entirely to that 
Constitution and that Union which their rebellion was undertaken 
to destroy. 

Third. — That from the day of the organization of the Govern- 
ment under that Constitution, in the year 1789, down to the day 
when this rebellion began its infamous and unhallowed work, 
there never had been, on the part of that Government, a single act 
of hostility, nor even of unkindness, toward these States or their 
people. 

You should then have pointed out to your "countrymen," in 
language more persuasive and emphatic than I can use, their solemn 
and imperative duty as patriots, as Christians, and as men, in this 
hour of their country's suffering and peril ; and you should have 
told them that if these times are, as you say, "dark and danger- 
ous," this darkness and this danger have been caused by the 
wicked acts of these rebellious men. In such an address to your 
countrymen, your dedication would have been not merely " To all 
persons who have sworn to support the Constitution of the United 
States, and to all citizens who value the principles of civil liberty 
which that Constitution embodies, and for the preservation of 
which it is our only security," but also, "to all persons who abhor 



20 

treason and rebellion against that Constitution, and to all who prize 
the inestimable blessings of our hallowed Union, and to all who 
hold dear the farewell words of the Father of his country." 

I had intended, in this letter, to comment on that part of your 
pamphlet which relates to the President's proclamation of the 24th 
of September, 1862, but this paper is already sufficiently extended. 
It would, I think, be easy to show that the dreadful dangers you 
apprehend are, in truth, to use your own terms, " portentous clouds" 
and "gigantic shadows" of your own creation. At any rate you 
may rest assured, if you and I and all others of our fellow-citizens, 
outside of the rebel States, shall make honest, earnest, determined 
efforts for the putting an effective end to this rebellion, (and that 
such will be the case I, loving my country and knowing the un- 
speakable value of the stake, have no right nor reason to doubt,) 
those efforts will be crowned with speedy and triumphant success, 
peace and harmony will be restored to the republic, the " prin- 
ciples of civil liberty" will not have suffered, and the bugbears of 
" usurpation," " arbitrary power," and other similar chimeras, 
which excited imaginations and gloomy tempers have evoked, will 
disappear forever. 

Had you been an unknown and obscure citizen, any notice of 
your pamphlet would have been supererogatory ; but because of 
the influence calculated to be exerted by anything coming from the 
pen of one who had but recently been the incumbent of the highest 
office in the gift of the Government, and who is now in the exalted 
walks of social and professional life, I have deemed it my duty to 
present these views of your argument, and thus " possibly to aid 
my countrymen" in "forming right conclusions" as to its merits 
and the merits of the subject of which it treats. 

I hear that others have published answers to your paper. Not 
having seen any of them, I know not but that I may have merely 
repeated their views ; if so, no harm is done ; if I have presented 
any that are new, " possibly" some good may result. 

New- York, Nov. 28th, 1862. 

Charles P. Kirkland 



